


sound and colour

by Kaiseriin



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Can he be in a story without violence, F/M, It's Arthur Shelby, LOTS of violence, Violence, bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28485360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiseriin/pseuds/Kaiseriin
Summary: "Left some parts in France, like Bill," Jamie had once said about Arthur. "But he can be kind." After Arthur almost kills her little brother in a boxing match, Lola decides to let him prove it. • [ArthurShelbyxOC] •
Relationships: Arthur Shelby/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 19





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys just a short story i had on ff and never realised i hadn't uploaded it on ao3 lol. so here it is x

**_one_ **

* * *

The splintered pipes that lined the houses sputtered water into that narrow gully which ran behind the backyards and made the cobbled stones turn black, like a shimmering ocean. The droplets dampened the downy fluff from the pigeons' hutch and washed them away in gentle ripples toward the flimsy door which marked our backyard from all the others. I fed them in the mornings and stroked feathers in the afternoons.

The birds were naturally skittish and startled at the sound of children rushing through the gully with little shoes smacking against the wet ground. They trembled from the clatter of the neighbours' doors slammed shut at night. They scattered around the hutch if their bowls were tipped over. Bill had soothed them with his low rumbling tones. He used to cup them between his palms, stroking glittering purple feathers dripping into glossy green shades.

I remembered watching him and thinking that he had never held anything in his life as gently as he held those birds.

**_x_ **

Bill had wanted us quiet, in the house. He had warned us not to disturb the birds, to let them settle in their sawdust with small bowls of grain tucked alongside them. He had taken his belt and lashed the backs of my legs and he had slapped Jamie around the house to teach us not to slam doors or run down those creaking stairs in the house. He had convinced himself that the birds would hear it.

So, there was never much noise in the house.

**_x_ **

On the Tuesday that Finn Shelby first came to tell me that his oldest brother had almost murdered Jamie in a match, there was more noise than there had ever been. I heard it from the backyard while I straightened the mesh-wire fencing that surrounded the loft, that dull thumping against the door and distant shouts. I wondered if Jamie had locked himself out somehow, even though I knew in my heart that he would have come through the backyard instead. I closed the latch and walked through the house, cracking open the front door until the chain caught.

There was Finn, his cap pulled from his head to wrench between his hands. I noticed that he had started to part his hair much like Jamie did, split at the scalp in a neat parting. I thought, _oh God, Jamie is dead_. It was so fleeting and quick that I hardly felt it. Finn straightened out his coat which crackled in whitish foam from droplets of rain overhead. Alongside him, his closest friend Isaiah stood with his cap dipped low against his brow.

I remembered that I used to feed them sandwiches, before, just after matches between Jamie and the other little boys around our neighbourhood. The mud had tracked the floorboards and their chatter had filled the house. But it had been all right, because Bill had not been around. Jamie had known it and it had softened the usual tension in his shoulders. Even as a boy, there had always been tension in his shoulders.

"Arthur had a boxing match with Jamie," Finn said. "He hurt him bad, Ms Callaghan. But all the lads helped pull him off and he – he should be in the hospital, now. Arthur wanted to apologise, he – he's sorry, Ms Callaghan."

While he spoke, I remembered how Finn Shelby had once clung to my skirts after he had tumbled and scraped his knees whilst running with the older boys. I had cleaned his shredded skin, kissed all that lumpy swelling which flowered around his kneecap, then sent him off to Ada or Polly. Both Finn and Isaiah tipped their caps, stepping backward. Isaiah mentioned that they had put aside his gym clothes – the clothes that belonged to my little brother, who had been put in a hospital by Arthur Shelby.

"Pull him off," I repeated distantly.

I had spoken to myself, because both boys had rushed off into the great, thundering sheets of rain that fell against the cobbled street. The greyish tones of the houses left the world colourless and bland, apart from the orange outline around the curtains of those who had not yet retired to bed. I stood there as if the boys still spoke to me, because the words that they had spoken swirled and swirled like shreds of newspapers and cigarette butts in the gully behind the house. Then I turned back inside.

The door was still ajar and gusts of wind licked at the tablecloth and ruffled my coat on its stand. I found whiskey in the cabinet and took a quick shot. It burned my throat and scorched my eyes, but my arms soon warmed from their cold stiffness and I cracked them into place, pulling on my scarf and my boots soon after. I had almost forgotten my coat but grabbed it just before I closed the door.

I forgot to lock it properly, but the cobbled streets moved like the waves of that same black ocean I had imagined while feeding the birds, and I was mesmerised. There was laughter from the pubs, silence from the alleyways, and the contrast affected me. The coat felt too heavy and the rain only worsened it. I walked through the streets. I walked to the hospital.

**_x_ **

It was quiet in the hospital, just like in the house. I had imagined pale, stretched-out faces floating from those void spaces behind the doors that lined the halls, wailing and moaning their agony aloud. Instead, there was silence apart from the scuff of shoes against tiles; my shoes and those of the nurse who walked a few feet ahead of me. I touched her arm and said, _please_ – _James Callaghan_?

Perhaps it was worse that she knew the name already, without any more prompting.

**_x_ **

His room was on the second floor, tucked at the end of the hall, beyond all the new-born babes. I had held him, when he was a baby. I wanted him to be a babe again, tucked into the cradle of my arms and taken from that bleached odour which soaked the walls of the hospital. I wished I had brought him his own pyjamas, suddenly. I wished I had brought him his slippers. I had made him his supper; soup with soda bread on the side, though it had grown cold on the windowsill while it waited for him, while I had waited for him. It had curdled and hardened around the edges and the bread had never been that fresh, anyway, but it had been all that I could afford, that morning.

I touched his hand and found it clammy. His hair had been shorn on the left side, cleaned and dressed from his stitches. He was not himself, with those stitches. It had left his forehead swollen, distorted. It ruined his handsome features. I wished I had brought him pyjamas and wished I had brought him his slippers. He would never have told the other boys that he liked his comfort, liked a cuddle, liked to be soft without them mocking him for it.

His hand was _clammy_.

**_x_ **

He made awful sounds in his throat, almost like he wanted to speak. His foot twitched if the light in the hall flickered. He responded to words like purple and blue better than green and red. I told him about his room and its off-white walls. I told him that his curtains were sheer and sunlight touched the floorboards like I touched his hand. He used to kick out his legs and clench his fists, in that bed.

Like he was still fighting Arthur Shelby.

**_x_ **

"Most people do that," one nurse said. She tilted her head toward him and his fingers gnarled into balls. "Take little movements and think it means more than it does. I see it time and time again in this place. But he suffered a lot of trauma, Ms Callaghan. He needs some time."

**_x_ **

Flowers arrived on Friday and wilted within the week, never touched. The petals shrivelled, rotted in black edges that slowly crept inward. Arthur Shelby was like those petals. He strutted alongside his brothers, all the while with blackness seeping into him, festering in him; made him unwell, made him hurt and hurt others. I had known him, as a little child; loved him, as a girl.

He had given me flowers, he had pecked my lips in a field nearby while we played with the other children and he had beaten another little boy from another street after he pushed me in the mud.

He had asked if I would marry him even if he had Gypsy blood, because he had been called names by other kids for that, but he had never retaliated until they started to call his brothers the same names that they had called him for his heritage, and then he had battered them, and I figured that that fighting had simply never stopped, in him.

**_x_ **

I had brought Jamie to his boxing matches, those first few weeks that we had come back to our old home in Birmingham, even though he grumbled and said he was not a child. I had spotted Arthur behind the ropes, punching and hitting and still doing what he had been doing when I had known him as a boy.

His ribcage had been stark against his flesh speckled in bruises, hard lines protruding as if all his ribs flexed like wires while he moved. He was thin, he was tall. He never looked like he could take as many punches as he did, but he always took one hit and then swung harder.

Sometimes, he looked at me for longer than he wanted to, because I could see what he wanted and I could see what he wished had happened, and I knew that he remembered all those little moments as children between us, before he had been a soldier, before he had been to France, before Tommy had ridden on _his fucking black horse_. Instead of saying it, he looked down at the shredded skin around his knuckles and spat blood onto the mat beneath him.

Instead of me saying it for him, I left Jamie to tie his gloves and walked out into the streets with the hard scent of copper in my nostrils, like I bled in his place.

**_x_ **

_Left some parts in France, like Bill_ , Jamie had once said about Arthur. _But he can be kind._

**_x_ **

There had been a card tucked into the petals. I never read it. I let it sink into the dirt. I imagined it was Arthur buried beneath the dirt, but somehow his face morphed into that of my little brother, and my spine seemed to coil and shift like a serpent, the tailbone its slithering tongue, the nape of my neck its tail flicking back and forth. The hatred had slithered between my organs and settled there, wound tight around them like a sentient being, curling even tighter if I dwelled on the Shelbys for a moment too long.

I had dark thoughts while I fixed his pillows and dabbed his mouth and brushed his hair from his face. It poisoned all motion in me, seeped into my hands and made my nails scrape against my palms to cure the needling itch which gnawed at me from beneath the skin.

**_x_ **

I wondered if I could find a gun in Birmingham before the Shelbys heard about it and dreamt of marching into _The Garrison_ with the pistol cocked in my hand, raised to Arthur. It was merciful for a man like Arthur to be put down like a sick dog that had bitten one too many children in our street.

I dreamt of his shocked features soon stilled and motionless once the bullet ran through him, and then turned, in my own dream, to face the gun cocked at me by Tommy Shelby. I would have smiled at him. It would have been worth it.

Put down like sick dogs, the pair of us. There was something cathartic in the thought of it. There was something to be said for a death like that, without anything drawn out, without anything painful. But Jamie still breathed, and until that stopped, there was little time to think about my own death.

It could only come for me if he had gone ahead of me.

**_x_ **

I worried that all my hatred would affect Jamie, somehow, like it could reach him even in his faraway world. It made me look away from him and look away from the furniture in his hospital room and look away and away until I felt I had to stand in the hall for a moment to steady myself while a nurse drew the curtain around his bed and sealed him away from me.

The halls on his ward were large and let in great waves of light, though there was little sun. There was some sublime calmness to be found in that hall, stood with arms crossed and head tipped back. It was the only time that all that darkness dripped from me and let me breathe.

**_x_ **

Behind the curtain, there was a silhouette which seemed much taller than the nurse had been, and the words spoken were gruff and low and apologetic. Like he recited a prayer learned in childhood, his cadence stuttered and his phrasing unsure. He held his hands together, fingers laced, his cap tucked behind them, cradled against his chest. He tilted his head back like I had done in the hall, but there was no softening of his features against light.

Finally, he turned and looked at me and I awaited a malicious thrill to fill my stomach from his shame, which forced him to tear his stare from mine just as soon as he had found it. But I never felt anything more than shame in myself for having wanted him to suffer more, because Jamie had spoken of him in a better light than what shone on him there before me; that light had been left in the hall.

"I thought 'e were alone," Arthur said. "When I came in, there weren't no-one in 'ere but your Jamie and the nurse. She left, and I thought I could just – I could talk to 'im and tell 'im –…"

There was not enough space in the room, though he kept to his own side and never approached, and his limbs hung uselessly at his sides until he seemed to recall the cap held in his left hand, which he then turned and turned in his grip while he looked at the floorboards. I stepped forward, because I sensed that he would not.

In some small way, it meant more that he had stayed away. He watched me warily, like he waited for me to scream and claw at him. But I was tired. I had cried enough, alone, in a room where my brother breathed yet never spoke. I found that all my dreaming had done nothing for me. Faced with him in reality, I saw him as that sick dog. I saw myself as the same.

"Sit with me," I said. "He'll hear you better, like that."

The cap drooped in his hands, forgotten. "What?"

Strands of hair curled against Arthur's forehead lined in wrinkled confusion. Still, he reached for that chair which had been mine for days once he saw that I pushed it toward him. He placed it near Jamie, whose pale face remained focused on the pock-marked ceiling overhead, reddish eyelids safely shut from this world.

Arthur folded into that seat, his cap still scrunched in his fists as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs. I pulled a chair alongside him and it seemed to draw him up from his stupor, his hand rubbing harshly at his nose with a snort.

"I don't want to intrude," he said.

"He should hear other voices," I replied quietly. "He hardly reacts to me anymore. Just like when he was awake and ignored all my nagging at him. Never listens."

His laugh was humourless and guilty. "All lads are like that, at his age. Think they know it all. I thought I knew the world, once."

"And now?"

He stared at Jamie. "Now I don't think nothin'. Nothin' touches me but sound and colour. Nothin' goes in, like it did before. And nothin' good ever comes out."

Jamie breathed in gentle ripples, his lips parted. His skin had lost that shininess and dulled into low browns and yellows; those were shades of healing, the nurses said, but why then had he not woken up to tell me that for himself?

Arthur never sat still. He shifted and shifted like he wanted to peel off his own skin because it bothered him so much and had done for a long time, now. But he found that he could not peel it off, and his hands dropped flat against his thighs, rubbing the heels of his palms against the scratchy fabric for relief.

"Tommy told me it were a bad idea to come 'ere," he said softly. "Said you would want to batter me like – like…"

There was a wet sound in his throat that reminded me of the noises that came from Jamie in those mornings when the nurses turned him and wiped his crusted lips with cloth. It sounded like trauma, its rawness muffled by the hands that he clamped against his face. He rocked in his chair, back and forth, back and forth. It was nothing but pure agony gnarled within him, like he had whipped and burnt and slapped and pinched every inch of himself even before he had stepped into that ring with Jamie – like he had hurt himself more than I could have hurt him.

"Why did you come?" It came out unkind, it came out spiteful.

He drew back, inhaling sharply through nostrils which seemed blocked. "It were Ada what told me to come 'ere – _if you're sorry enough, Arthur,_ _take the first step, and see that boy in his bed."_

"And you listened to her."

"I listened to 'er," he nodded, "and I walked 'ere me-self. Didn't tell no-one, mind. Not even our Polly. But she'll know. Polly always knows. She don't need words. Tommy'll know, too. Don't do no good to ignore our Ada. She'll only shout louder." He paused, and added, "What do the nurses say?"

"That he suffered a lot of trauma," I said. "If he wakes, he might not be himself anymore. They're not able to know it until he comes 'round and tells us for himself."

In his gruff, low rumble, he said, "Your boy'll always be looked after. I'll make sure o' that me-self."

I suffered his words like a heavy blow to the chest. "If he wakes and drools like an infant for the rest of his life, will you pay for him then? Pay for nurses to wipe his bottom and roll him around in a wheelchair without him ever knowing he even left his bed at all? Is that all there is to it, Arthur? Ruin a life and replace it with a sack of money?"

Arthur surprised me with his silence. He was focused on Jamie, his dark brows knitted together. He sighed again. He had sighed a lot since he sat down with me and my little brother.

"Sometimes, I think o' what I would like to say, and all the words sort themselves out in me 'ead. Then it comes time to spit 'em out, right, somethin' 'appens. Somethin' jumbles them up and when I say 'em, I 'ear 'em comin' out all wrong. Nothin' like what I 'ad planned in me 'ead. But nothin's been workin' up there for a while, y'know."

"I know. But it doesn't make it all right."

"No," he echoed. "No, it don't."

I settled into my seat and rubbed my eyes.

He tilted his head at me. "You ain't been 'ome in a while, y'know. You should sleep."

"I can't," I said. "If he wakes up and I'm not here – if he thinks he's alone –…"

Arthur was very quiet for another while. "I could stay and watch 'im."

I looked away from Jamie. "What?"

"If it were all right with ya," he said quickly. "If it ain't puttin' you out, mind. I'd stay and watch 'im and if 'e woke up, I would say you'd nipped down the shop to get 'im some sweets. Jamie loved them sweets what rot your teeth from your gums when 'e were little, didn't 'e?"

I felt adrift in a foreign sea, listening to him. It felt as if we had somehow outgrown one another in childhood like we had outgrown our coats and boots and he had gone one way while I had gone the other. He had made my cheeks flush red, when I was a little girl. I had made him laugh, when he was a little boy. I looked at him now and wondered just when that had changed, because I sat with him and started to piece him together again.

I remembered that Polly used to snip his hair whenever it grew too long and she always cropped it too close to his scalp and he had hated it. I remembered that he used to share his chalk with me and sketch silly doodles on the footpath in front of his house, though he often liked to draw obscene things that made Polly clap him around the ear if she ever caught him. I remembered that he used to love me a lot, back then. I used to love him, too. Though it had been a childish kind of love; and love all the same.

_He's sorry, Ms Callaghan._

I had felt that all my hatred for him would be eternal, that the bitterness which coated my tongue would stain all my speech and sour me, that that tormenting _need_ to see him choke on his own misery would make me bitter and flecked in mould, like old fruit. I had wanted him to suffer.

But Jamie was still here. He deserved better than that, deserved more of my devotion than could be given with hatred like that.

"No," I said softly. "No, I want to stay with him."

Arthur had resigned himself to my answer before I had even said it. He had wanted me to scream at him and batter him and send him away. He had _hoped_ for it, for his own self-hatred and bitterness and misery to be washed away from him with whiskey and knocked clean out of him in the next brawl with another man who hit him harder than my brother had.

Arthur thought of beatings as a form of cleansing and if I let him slither away from this, his apologies would come in neat envelopes plump with money and mild allowances from the Blinders if I ever asked favours of them.

It hurt him to look at Jamie; _that_ was his penance, _that_ was his punishment.

"Come to see him tomorrow," I said.

He had been fiddling with his cap, but his hands stilled. "You want me to come back?"

"Jamie cannot be another boy lost to your war, Arthur – and not that war in France," I said. I held out my hand and lightly touched his temple. "That other one, up here, with all that sound and colour. Been going on too long now, hasn't it?"

His mouth trembled and his eyebrows drew together in agony. "I never meant to hurt him, Lo."

"I know." I reached out to smooth a stray hair from Jamie's pale face. "But you did, Arthur. You said you came here to talk to him. I think you want to do more than that. I don't want flowers sent by Tommy while he waits to send the pallbearers. I want nothing from you but what Jamie deserves."

_Left some parts in France, like Bill_ , Jamie had once said about Arthur. _But he can be kind. Like you said he was when you were kids._


	2. two

_two_

* * *

The birds had bowls that needed to be filled; it was the only reason that I left him in the hospital. I marched and marched until my hands pulled at the latch and I stepped into the house, into its stillness and emptiness and I shut the front door behind me. Then, I screamed. It was short, loud. I felt it wrinkle the faded lines around my mouth, push them outward. I held my fingertips against my cheeks and pulled down at the tightness which had settled beneath my skin and left me too high-strung.

_**x** _

I had started to hate loud noises like Bill had, but I never had that kind of self-control, anyway.

_**x** _

I cleaned the plates and got rid of the cold, hardened supper that had been left for Jamie. It crusted the bowl and I had to scrub harder and harder until I simply set the bowl on the counter-top and tipped it off the edge, letting it shatter. I cracked the shards beneath my boots and found satisfaction in that sick crunching sound, the dulled edges grinding against the bones of my foot through the sole.

I found some whiskey in the cabinet, tucked behind the aprons and boxes. The first sip was always the freshest and the second was always the one that smarted. I drank some more. I drank while I fed the birds and I drank while I fed myself. I slept for a little while, somewhere in between.

_**x** _

I awoke; cold, hardened, crusted.

_**x** _

Mona was already in the kitchen. She had jimmied the lock in the backyard, she said, which really meant that she had taken a small wooden stick and battered at the plank of wood that barred the door until the plank lifted and dropped to the ground. It was a rotted, damp old plank that Bill had put there many years beforehand, and it had been used so much that we had never bothered to change it.

All the noise had bothered the birds and bothered my sore head even more, but Mona had already made broth and slapped bread alongside it. I ate with her in the quiet of the morning, while the birds' wings clapped in the backyard and rattled the mesh-wire fencing.

"I'll come and see Jamie later, shall I?"

I never answered her but rolled my shoulders in a shrug and chewed on a hardened chunk of old bread. Mona stood and swept around the kitchen, snatching the half-finished broth in front of me and tipping the bowl into the sink. She cleaned her bowl, cleaned mine, started on the spoons and brushed off the crumbs that marred the plates before she dumped them into the basin, too. She scrubbed, sleeves drawn to her elbows, suds all around her. She had swept away the shards, but never said a word about it.

"Did you drink last night, Lo?"

I pulled bloodshot eyes toward her. "Yeah. Little bit."

"I shagged their John, you know," she said. I was so used to her quick switches in conversation that I hardly noticed it anymore. "Like a bloody dog, he was, humping at my fucking leg all night in _The Garrison_ , 'til I finally gave in to him. Paid me finely. Before he got married, mind, though I doubt a wedding ring would stop him unless it cut off circulation to a particular part of his anatomy that best not be described after breakfast. Not that he wasn't good, either, but –…"

"But you would rather Tommy hump your leg like a dog."

Mona laughed. "Of course I would rather it be Tommy! But who does he look at? Nobody, not since that other Irish girl. John is taken and Tommy is a businessman."

"And Arthur?"

"Arthur was for you," she said. "Remember? Made ourselves that pact when we were little girls. It was Arthur for you, Tommy for me. But then Tommy had that girl, what was her name? Never mind, it doesn't matter now. How it changes, eh?"

I reached into the pocket of her coat, strewn over her chair, and pulled out a cigarette. I found her matchbox and lit the end, inhaling sharply.

"Arthur came 'round to see Jamie, yesterday," I said.

Her face filtered through the pale wisps of smoke that blew from my lips. I saw that she was not at all surprised. She had already known it, because Mona had friends all around Small Heath and even further out around Birmingham, with her profession. She finished with her washing She dropped the cloth and sat in her chair again, across from me, reaching into her pocket, patting around until she found the box and then spotted the cigarette in my mouth.

"Cheeky bugger. You'll bring me another one to replace it," she grumbled.

"You'll bring me fresh bread and some broth, too," I replied. "You'll let me finish it, next time."

"So, Arthur Shelby drove you to drink again." She tapped her fingertip against her cigarette and sighed. "Lo, I'm not one to tell you not to drink. I could down shots faster than any man on this street and stand taller than them after it, too. But you're not good with drink. Jamie asked you to keep away from it. Besides, it'll make you look uglier, you know. All them good looks of yours down the drain for a bit of whiskey."

"Had a rough night, Mona," I said.

"Rough night," she repeated, pursing her lips. "Rough night, rough week, rough fucking life for the pair of us, it seems like. What'll drinking do for you, with all that? Give you a fucking headache, is what, on top of all that roughness."

I took another drag from the cigarette and felt the shakiness in my hands settle.

"Where'd you hide it?" she asked.

"Bathroom," I answered flatly. "Under the sink, in the cabinet. Jamie never looks in there."

"Right."

Mona ground out her cigarette and stood, marching out into the hall. I heard her boots clap against the creaky wooden staircase and heard the cabinet doors in the bathroom slam apart, before there came the clinking of bottles. I leaned forward with my elbows on the table and sighed into my palms, rubbing them against my forehead afterward to clear out all that crinkled noise. She returned to the kitchen and placed two empty bottles in front of me.

"Drank only one last night, or two?"

"One."

"And the other?"

"Couples of weeks ago. You'd disappeared with that fella from Foxton and Jamie had gone out with his friends for a while. Downed it then."

"Foxton," she hummed. "Ah, I remember. Well, need to earn a living somehow. How much more have you got from what Bill left you, eh?"

I sank lower into my seat. "Enough for another while, I suppose. If I watch it, that is. And Jamie had some boxing matches that he won, a while back. He contributes, in his own way. But there'll be no more of it, when he wakes up. I won't have him fighting ever again."

She settled back into her chair and crossed her arms. "You should sell them birds – would make a fine profit."

"I'm not selling the birds. Bill wanted them here."

She traced patterns on the knotted wooden surface of the table. "You could end up walking with me some night, out there, if you don't plan ahead."

I snorted. "Not sure many punters would want me, Mona. Not much experience."

"Some of them prefer that," she replied easily. "Like to think they're in charge and it works best if you _let_ them think it. Some can be rough, if you don't."

I felt that crusty weariness that always followed a night of drinking by myself, like I had moulted and still picked off old shreds of dead skin from the new, fresh parts of my body. Mona had often slept in my bed after nights with men who never liked to let her be in charge and I had watched her moult and change and dress herself in the morning as if she had never been that other girl, weepy and sniffling and rubbing at bruises around her throat while she slept on my pillows.

"Did you want Arthur there?"

I looked at her. "What does it matter to a Shelby what anyone else _wants_?"

She spun her finger against her temple. "I heard he came back more cracked than his brothers," she said. "Jamie isn't the first lad on this street what went against Arthur in that ring, neither."

"I know," I said. "I know."

"And he was probably sent 'round to that hospital by that old witch Polly Gray," she added, nodding her head. "Wicked cow, that one. Heard her son came back to Small Heath. Saw him walking with her this morning and felt like warning him that if he stays any longer, it won't be just his lungs turned withered and miserable from this place."

"Polly isn't that bad. She's smart," I reasoned.

"Oh, aye, smart enough to run that business. Did you hear Tommy has Lizzie Stark working for him now? Christ, if all it takes is learning to use one of them typewriters, I'm in the wrong business." Mona brushed aside her hair and sat straighter, shifting her tone to imitate Lizzie. "' _Oh yes, Mr Shelby, I left those letters on your desk for you, the same desk you like to bend me over and_ –…'"

"Mona," I interrupted wearily. "I need to be off soon. I don't want Jamie alone."

"I'll come with you then."

"No, you won't. I'm not having Jamie hear that kind of talk."

"You think he can hear you?"

"The nurses say it helps him, so I'll do it. And Arthur came by himself. Never told Tommy or Polly."

"Ashamed, is he?"

"He's trying," I said.

She shook her head. "If he wants to absolve himself, he can find a priest. Forgiveness is a kindness that you don't owe him. You know that, don't you?"

Standing from the table, the scrape of my chair against the floor reminded me of the chair in the hospital room, and I felt a heavy dread within my stomach. I had tense shoulders, tense hands and feet, tense everything. I walked stiffly into the hall and reached for my coat. Mona watched, still in her seat, peering down the length of the hall.

"No more drinking, Lola," she called out. "Or you'll start to think Arthur means what he says."

I grabbed my scarf. "You can have a wash and a kip here," I replied. "Watch the birds for me."

"Watch the birds," she repeated. "And think of what could have been in childhood if we had kept our fucking promises, eh?"

_**x** _

I thought of Georgie Barlow while I walked to the hospital. He was another boy beaten by Arthur, his nose broken from a stray punch. Georgie had a bump that turned his nose from his face, skewered it left and made him sound as if he inhaled through a whistle in his nostrils. He had never held it against Arthur, because Arthur had lost a tooth in the back of his mouth that time. He had spat it out, a small glob of white in a puddle of red.

There had been pride in losing it. He had plucked it from the ground and he had held back his mouth with his finger to show the other boys that dark pit in his gums, bleeding and sore and washed with alcohol to cleanse it and steady his pain. He had always been violent, always thought with fists first and mind later. He had never changed. I used to find it thrilling. I used to think there was nothing that could keep Arthur down, not in a fight.

Something had shifted. It was not that he had hit Jamie – not that in itself, but all the things that had become before it. They called him an animal; rabid, mad, all those words that went with it.

_**x** _

He was not rabid, not mad, not all the time.

_**x** _

The hospital was much livelier at noon. I had worn the path that led to his room so much that I walked there without much thought behind it, my boots simply pushing ahead while I followed behind. I turned into the room and found Arthur already in the same seat that he had taken yesterday, tucked close against the bed. He had his head tilted forward, his fingers laced. He said nothing.

I pulled the chair closer to him, and only then did he shift in his seat, like he had lost his hearing and only noticed the fabric of my coat in his peripheral. He nodded at me and it felt oddly distant, like we had never known each other, never been friends and childhood crushes. He had not quite slicked back his hair like he usually did, and it had been parted to the wrong side.

Sitting in the chair alongside him, I shed my coat and scarf. I felt my hands flow around me, not quite mine, but not belonging to anybody else, either.

"D'you still want me 'ere?" His voice was croaky and tired. "D'you regret askin'?"

It was a dull morning, soggy and blue. Rain clicked against the window like the sound of Mona tapping her fingers against the wooden table.

"I don't regret it," I said. "Do you regret coming here?"

"No."

Arthur slumped into his seat and scraped his hands against his face like I had done earlier, peeling and tearing at old flesh that never quite left him. He wore all his mistakes. He breathed them. I glanced around the room, aware that something had changed but unable to figure out what until my gaze landed on some fresh flowers propped on the bedside table, flush with all sorts of beautiful colours that blurred together for me.

I thought them to be another effort to brush away the bruises and the pain, their stems clipped of thorns and yet still poking and poking at me more viciously with every prick.

"Tommy, was it? Or Polly? Both, this time?"

Arthur pulled his eyes from the floor and followed the tilt of my head toward the flowers.

"Nah. Weren't Pol, weren't Tom. It were me," he said simply. "It were me what went and got the card. It were me what wrote on it, too. It were me what ordered 'em, brought 'em 'ere. Never done that before. Used to see them gifts what Pol and Tom sent 'round for folks I 'urt like they just _appeared_. You can throw 'em out, if you don't like 'em. Just wanted to – to bring 'im somethin' that were bought by the person what did this to 'im."

Though his words had stunned me with their bluntness and honesty, I still felt some offense, but could not say what had caused it, really. I felt that I _wanted_ to be furious, and so I was. It was terribly simple, that fury. It bundled itself deep within me and made the world far easier to tackle than it had been when all I could feel was sadness. But it tapered off once Arthur began to speak again.

"I tried to go 'ome, after we talked yesterday. But I found me-self down on Barton Road. There were this pub. I went in for a drink – just a whiskey, mind. Then I came back 'ere, 'round five in the mornin'."

"Here?"

"'ere," he said. "In this room, with your boy. I talked to 'im. I kept thinkin' 'bout what you said, 'bout Jamie wakin' up and thinkin' there weren't no-one with 'im. Made me think about our Finn and what it woulda been like if it were 'im in that bed and not Jamie."

For the first time in a while, Arthur sat perfectly still. There was no bouncing of his leg, no frantic touching of his palms rubbed against his trousers or wild snorting, constantly sniffing and rubbing at his nose. He was motionless, limp in his seat. His eyes glistened and I felt entirely disconnected from the rest of the world because of it.

"It fuckin' tortured me," he finished. "To think o' Finn like that. To think o' Jamie like that."

 _Forgiveness is a kindness that you don't owe him_.

Turning away from him, I looked at Jamie again – again, again, again. I had already seen him a thousand times over, in that bed, so that even with eyelids closed, I saw his outline against them, saw his mouth made slack and stupid from all those punches.

All that simple fury had dwindled into agony, plain and aching and burning all over. I felt there was a weakness in forgiving him, just for bringing flowers and sitting with Jamie. He should have done those things without my pushing him. He should have been sorry without having it forced from him.

And here we were, torturing each other, together.

"I went to feed the birds," I said, out of the blue, the words drawn out by some kind of guilt. "I never wanted to leave Jamie by himself, but I thought about those poor birds, hungry and alone in their loft. I had to feed them. Nobody else would."

"I used to wonder what made your brother like them birds so much. Polly used to say that pigeons were just rats with wings on 'em - disgustin' little things, she called 'em. Then your Bill brought me 'round one day and showed me 'ow to 'old them proper, y'know. Brush 'em, feed 'em right."

The curtains trembled and the rain slowed.

"Used to think it were only dogs and 'orses what could love you for keepin' 'em," he continued. "But them birds loved your Bill."

"Bill tried to show Jamie, too. But Jamie never quite liked it. I take care of them for Bill, scrape out that hutch and clean it and feed them afterward," I told him. "But Jamie hates it. I bribe him to do it for me, some days."

"Bribe 'im, eh?" Arthur flashed a cheeky smile that looked far more like himself. "'ow much?"

"Couple of quid, whatever I can spare. Jamie fancies himself a businessman in the making. He – he talked about leaving for London," I said. "Make something of himself there, instead. Says he would have a better chance there than in Small Heath."

Arthur studied me. "And what would you do?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Leave with him to London? Or stay here?"

There was a heaviness behind his speech that bothered me. "There won't be any talk of London now, will there, Arthur?"

Scolded, he withdrew and looked down at his shoes. "We used to talk about London."

I loosened my crossed arms. "Arthur –…"

"I used to tell you that I'd find a good job there," he continued, his eyes lost in a fog. "Foreman in some fuckin' factory – made o' big dreams, me. Get us a nice little flat, just the pair o' us. I'd send for you once it were all set up for us, set up proper. Could've worked out nicely, eh?"

"You had bigger dreams than that, Arthur. Tommy did, too. You made them happen." I reached out and touched his suit. "Never could have bought a suit like that, as a foreman."

He looked down at his own suit as if he had not dressed himself this morning, but rather he had stood like a mannequin while others placed clothes around him instead. Like he had never moved his own limbs but had them moved for him at every moment.

"We ain't kids anymore," he said. "I got people what depend on me. _Family_ what depend on me."

"And what about all the other families you left behind in your temper, hm? What about mine?"

"I'm 'ere," he said. "I'm doin' what I can, Lo."

_You don't owe him._

_**x** _

Around three in the afternoon, Arthur had rose from his chair and left. He had said very little, but he had dared touch my shoulder in a light squeeze like he meant to say more. I scooted closer to Jamie and brushed aside his hair, like I had done before, an old habit of wanting to feel him, know that his flesh was still warm and real. I felt the jagged bump of stitches along his temple. I felt his cheeks, pink and bright. He looked fine, really. He had to be fine.

"I had another night of weakness, Jamie," I said. "I touched alcohol when I promised you that I wouldn't. I wanted to be good for you. But the house is lonely. You would miss Bill being there, even in one of his moods. I won't touch it again. Mona came and threw away the bottles. She'll watch me, she'll know if I do it again. But I won't touch it. I'm promising you."

The scent of the flowers wafted toward us and I wondered if it reached him in his faraway place.

_**x** _

The light dipped in a murky shade of blue that darkened his room, until a nurse came and fiddled with the old lamp on his bedside table, shuffling aside those flowers. I had drifted off, not quite asleep, but into a stupor of thinking and thinking and I felt I had drifted further away than this room allowed with the boundaries of its pale walls and faded details on its skirting boards.

There was a sharp clicking in the hall that stirred me and I thought that I recognised those steps, quick and sharp and cutthroat in their nature.

"Lola, you look fucking terrible."

She took the chair that Arthur had used all morning, her purse tucked against her lap and her eyes lined in a thick kohl that honed their knowingness even more. For all the richness of her clothing, she still held the odour of black soot and smoke, though I doubted it came from the chimneys that pumped smoke into Small Heath. It was what she had been formed from, and she carried it well.

"Polly, you look like a little girl playing at being rich," I said. "But somehow your address is only a few doors from mine. Funny that."

"Arthur never mentioned that I moved, then? Got myself a house outside of the city. Thought the fresh air might do me well – help my complexion."

I purposefully glanced around her features. "Hm, should have moved further out if that's all you got from it."

Her dark stare narrowed and her lips curled into a tight line, before she let out a small laugh and bumped my shoulder. "Still quick, aren't you, Lola? Far too quick for our Arthur. Did you get those flowers we sent?"

"Let them wither."

"But not the ones that Arthur brought you."

"How do you know they came from him?"

"Who else would bring them?"

Her purse clicked as she opened it and pulled out some cigarettes. She held one out to me.

"You're not smoking around Jamie."

Polly held my stare and then dropped the cigarette back into her purse, snapping it shut. "Arthur never mentioned that he was coming here. Disappeared by himself for a while, came back quiet. It's never a good thing for Arthur Shelby to be quiet. I was surprised he came here, 'til I found out whose brother he had hurt. Made all the sense in the world, then, Lola."

"Why, because we liked each other as children? He should have come regardless of whose brother it had been."

She smiled. "Arthur is a sentimental man. You won't find many of those nowadays – most of our men want to forget the past. He might want to forget the war, but not all that came before it."

"And what the Shelbys _want_ …" I trailed off, my tone bitter and crude.

"Arthur has his fair share of troubles," she said. "He isn't himself, when he's fighting. You should know that."

"He offered money. Offered to take care of Jamie for the rest of his life. Like a checklist for what should be said anytime a Shelby hurts somebody."

Polly was quiet, looking at Jamie. "If it were my son Michael in that bed, I would have killed the man that put him there. I can understand if you wanted to kill Arthur, too. But you let him apologise."

"Yeah, well, not all of us have pistols under our pillows, Pol," I snarked. "And what good would I be to Jamie if I killed Arthur and ended up floating in the canal once the rest of the Shelbys found me?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Don't be stupid. The canal? You forget you live a few doors away from me. A muddy field would do you just fine."

I wanted to hold onto my fury as tightly as I had done around Arthur, I felt it loosen its grip in my chest and I let out a small, reluctant laugh. When I looked at Jamie, though, that same guilt latched onto me and I felt ashamed.

"I need Arthur to be sorry, Polly. I need him to know that he can't hurt my boy and get away with it. It can't be that easy."

Polly tore her eyes away from Jamie to look at me. "Arthur cares about you, Lola Callaghan. But he has Shelby blood in him, _gypsy_ blood in him – he'll never be able to rest because of it. If you want blood, he'll give it to you. If you want flesh, he'll cut it off himself."

Unclasping her purse once more, she pulled out that same cigarette and plopped it between her lips. She stood before taking out the matchbox, taking a light and scratching it against the sandy edge to light it.

"You'll never punish him more than he'll punish himself, because you don't have the savagery in yourself that Arthur does - the _viciousness_. Even if you forgive him, he'll punish himself. If you want him to spend his life torturing himself, you already had it before he ever even got into that ring with your boy."

She took one draw from her cigarette and left.

_**x** _

The rain had started its familiar rhythm against the windowpanes and the curtains rustled. Arthur came into the room around eight, his clothes changed and hair slicked back. He had shaven, he looked much cleaner. He took the chair and sat beside me. I reached out and took his hand as soon as he had settled. He looked down at my hand in his and then flicked his eyes back up at me in surprise.

"Not now, Arthur," I said. "I can't do it now. But maybe someday."


	3. three

_three_

* * *

There was some gap that came in the night-time, sometime between the violet hues of the evening and silky black of pure night, while Mona slept alongside me like an infant tucked against its mother, that I remembered another night in which Arthur had fought with his father and then come to find me, climbing that slippery cobbled wall that dropped him into our backyard.

It had been bold, because the sound of his leather shoes smacking against the stone had startled the birds and rustled them, and it would have sparked Bill's temper. But that night, Bill had been out, having heard about grand manors left abandoned in the countryside with china cabinets and drawers stocked with rows upon rows of silver cutlery.

Arthur had a cut on his lip that wept while he told me his father had made another promise, hastily broken and cast aside, like all his other promises. He bled on a scratchy rag that I threw out soon afterward, not for its splotchy stains of bright red, but rather because I had been afraid that Bill might notice it.

It never mattered if my own mother saw the rag or found Arthur in the house. She was mute, tepid, made bitter and spiteful from the arguments with my father before he left for Ireland too. She would follow a few years later, but it was my father who had disappeared first. Arthur and I had that in common, fathers who made promises and left before they could fulfil them.

Besides, it was only Bill who spoke in that house. Before Jamie had learned to toddle on his own two feet, he had known that it was Bill who spoke and it was the rest of us who listened.

That was the first night that Arthur had mentioned taking me to London. He had planned it, from hopping a train without paying for tickets – he had spent his last few quid on shoes for Tommy and he refused to take the pitiful clump of pocket-money that I had saved from the rare moments Bill gave us something from his takings.

We had sat at my kitchen table and I had held that old rag to his lips while he spoke and felt it terribly intimate, our kneecaps knocked together. I had marvelled at his jawline. I had liked the narrow line of his nose.

"Lo, I want better for ya," he had told me. "For us. Imagine it, yeah – a nice flat for us, with big fuckin' windows what lets in lots o' light, make it nice and bright for us, just like them big windows on them houses we saw down in Westfield that day we went on a trip together, you remember? It'll be near over one o' them bakeries 'round London, mind. I'll buy bread for us to eat in the mornin', 'fore I leave for work."

I had smiled at him, eyes flicking upward to look into his eyes, gently dabbing at his lip. "And what'll I do, in this big dream of yours?"

His hand had cupped my elbow and then slid down to my wrist, pulling away that rag. His palms had been dry and his chin had been stained in a light reddish-pink from all that blood swept away. "Whatever you fuckin' want to do, 'cause I'll work 'ard enough for the both o' us."

I had laughed. "You'll bring me pearls and bracelets every day and I'll grow fat from all that bread in the bakery. Sounds about right."

"Too fuckin' right," he had said; his smile split the drying crust on his lip and fresh blood trickled.

"Oh, Arthur," I had scolded him.

"Ah, let it fuckin' bleed. Don't make no difference if I bleed."

"Course it makes a difference. Makes a difference to me," I had said. I had balled my fist, lightly bumping it against his jaw to make him smile.

He had still being holding my wrist and grinned at me. "Fancy yourself a boxer, Lo?"

"Put me in that ring and I would take down any man," I had told him, full of a sudden boldness and desire to make him smile as much as he made me. "Including you, Arthur Shelby."

I had felt a heavy blush on my cheeks, one thrilling churn in my stomach at his chuckle, an itchiness on my palm to cup his jaw and stroke that little patch of a bruise flourishing on his cheek. I noted that he had never released my wrist. He held it gently, cradled it. He held me like Bill held those birds in the backyard, touching feathers, soothing them. He was rarely so open and soft.

"Don't doubt it," he had said. "Knocked me down plenty o' times, you 'ave, without even swingin' at me."

The blush had worsened. "Come off it, Arthur."

He had watched me. "I mean it."

I had looked away from his dark stare and looked at the porcelain figurines on our mantel instead. They had been stolen and then gifted to our mother from Bill, who passed them off as expensive antiques bought from the bigger markets in Birmingham. She had wanted to believe him, because my mother had always wanted, with all of her heart, to believe in what Bill told her – and so she did.

"What was it about?"

He had understood what I had meant by that. It embarrassed him, made him shift on his chair and scratch his jawline with his free hand while the other stayed on my wrist. "I went to talk to me dad and found 'im takin' some money from our cabinet, puttin' it in 'is pocket. 'e were plannin' to get the train. But 'e were meant to stay longer, Lo. 'e _old_ me – said 'e would be there for us more. Polly told me not to listen to 'im. Fuckin' idiot."

"You're not an idiot," I had said. "He shouldn't toy with you like that. He's your father."

"What about yours, eh?" He had noticed that I recoiled from him and quickly pulled me back to him. "Lo, it ain't like that, sweet'eart – I meant you get it, don' ya? Your father comes back, tells your Bill –…"

"He tells Bill nothing." I had turned my eyes those figurines again, little dolls in old-fashioned dresses, cheeks painted in dots of pink. "My father's afraid of Bill. It changed – I don't know when, but it changed. He doesn't look at Bill the same anymore. He knows that Bill would kill him, if he wanted to. Bill was made for killing."

Arthur had steadied himself. The blood on his chin glinted dully in the low light streamed from between the curtains behind me. "Ain't no-one made for killin', Lo."

"Bill is made for it," I had said. I folded the cloth, one-handed, then threw it onto the table. "What happened? When he told you he was leaving again?"

"Tried to talk with 'im, like you said – not to let – let me temper get the best o' me."

It had been hard for him to admit that he had listened to something I had told him days beforehand, about talking out his troubles with his father. I looked at the bruise on his cheek and wished I had kept my mouth shut.

"Grabs me by the shirt, y'know, knocks me 'round. Polly is screamin' at 'im, pullin' 'im off. And then it all gets quiet, and we're standin' there like statues. I see Polly lookin' at the stairs – there's our Tom, watchin' us. Don't say nothin', Tom. Just stands there, watchin' us, 'til Dad fucks off out without tellin' us where. Don't matter. I bring Tom back up to 'is room. 'e ain't a kid no more, Lo. But I forget that, sometimes."

There it was, the warmth in his brief and shy smile that quickly fell from his lips in his humiliation around his own emotions, the same warmth that forced strength into my limbs and made me lift a hand to cup his cheek like I had wanted to do for such a long time. We stayed like that, his hand on my wrist and my hand on his cheek. I had never held a boy like that. Never held anybody other than Jamie with such tenderness.

I felt exposed and stupid and full of excitement and remorse that I had not done it sooner.

"Tom tells me that when 'e gets older, 'e won't never talk to our father again."

"Tom is just a kid, Arthur," I had murmured; his cheek was warm but scratchy from the first patch of stubble there. "He doesn't mean it."

"Nah. I know Tom – don't say nothin' that 'e don't mean."

Arthur had turned to peck my wrist – something that he had never done in all the time that he had known me, but that he did then as if it had been natural to him. He held my eyes. He was bolder, too.

"It would be nice, London," he had said, his lips still vibrating against the thin flesh of my inner wrist, so that the sound travelled along my veins and thrummed in my heart and set it alight. "Our flat, above a fuckin' bakery."

"What about your little brothers, eh? And mine. Jamie needs me."

His eyes had met mine, flecked in sincerity. "I know," he had said. "I know we can't ever leave, not when they need us. But I like to think about it, sometimes. But it's nice to pretend, innit?"

**x**

Mona hogged the blankets like she always did. I stroked through her knotted, dull brown hair and thought about all the things that I had forgotten about Arthur. Between us, there had been no grand breaking-up, no parting words, no fight to hold onto each other. There had been distance – I had left for Ireland and he had left for France soon afterward. Then, we returned, and there had been no grand reuniting, no starting words, no fights. I had seen him in the street. He looked the other way.

It had hurt. But there had been Jamie to take to school and there had been a stain on his shirt and his shoes had a hole that soaked his socks and I had been holding it together by a thread, so that Arthur had been easily swept aside. It had been strangely mutual and not at all discussed.

**x**

But there had once been a time that he had sought comfort in me.

**x**

There was a knocking at the door. I had finished with the birds, fed them and chatted to them like I did most days, especially without Jamie around, and Mona was useless in the mornings. I stood still in the kitchen, held by that sound.

The birds startled and tipped their bowls. I glimpsed those brief flashes of green and purple, their feathers flapping madly against the mesh-wire fence, small chunks of food pushed between the grating and coating the wet ground underneath the loft. I felt overwhelmed, like that knocking induced a great sickness in me. It struck me violently, that sense of drowning beneath some great weight unseen.

I imagined it all in an instant. I imagined that I would open that door and find Finn Shelby behind it.

This time, Finn would tell me that Jamie had died, sometime in the night, on his own in that bed which had always seemed to swallow his frame. Finn would tell me that Jamie had been swept off into some black sleep and, drawn from some vague desire to offer comfort, Finn would say that it had been peaceful. Isaiah would stand beside him, his hands clutching at that cap with sharp blades tucked into its edges.

Finn Shelby would tell me these things. I would flap madly and tip bowls and never settle again.

I moved toward the hall, _into_ the hall, until I stood on the other end and touched the door numbly, shakily. The birds' constant squawking had reached me there, in the hall, with forehead pressed against the door. I tasted whiskey in my mouth but had not touched it since Mona had thrown out the bottles, and my tongue ran along my gums to source it all the same, frantically hoping for another stray drop.

I pulled the latch and ripped open the door. There was a Shelby, but it was not Finn. Arthur turned around, having waved off some shadowy figure that disappeared in the gully behind the houses across from mine, before he spun back around to face me with an oddly manic flutter of hands and legs – that is, his hands jerked up to yank his cap from his hair, but then he seemed to catch himself and wiped his nose, taming himself.

Behind him, a car idled.

"Lo," he said. "I brought the car 'round. I thought I could – could drive us to the 'ospital, today."

His knuckles were coated in dried scabs and blood not yet washed from his skin. He had a splotch on his temple from a punch. He had been in another fight.

I looked behind him at the street, which was mostly empty apart from three children who played tag. I had known the neighbours all my life. I had known this street, too. But it had become foreign, like all those neighbours had been subjects in a painting that was contained in the frames of this street, formed in stiff, oil-based poses with expressions calm and blank. Arthur had ruined all that. He pushed himself into the frame and its subjects started to move around him, their strokes of paint rippled, poses shifted outward to accommodate him.

"Lola?"

"Come inside and wash your hands," I said.

Arthur followed me into the house and closed the door behind him. He clapped his hands together and made that funny snort again. He followed me through to the kitchen again, his eyes momentarily flitting upward to look through the window in the kitchen that showed the birds' loft. His eyes moved even further up to the ceiling overhead, hearing the creaking footsteps from Mona moving around in the bedroom, though I didn't bother to tell him that she was here.

He looked back at the loft while I filled a basin with warm water and found a cloth. I motioned for him to stand closer and he obliged. He was so distracted by the birds that he flinched when I took his hands and held them in the water, taking that cloth and gently running it around his palms.

Arthur dampened his lips. "Went to London, last night."

Surprised, I glanced up at him. "London?"

"Aye," he mumbled gruffly. "Tommy needed us – John and me, that is. Different game altogether in London, Lo. The fuckin' music they got would do your nut in. Different fuckin' game."

I had turned my eyes away from him. "Did you find our flat there, then?"

"What flat?"

The water had turned pink and lukewarm. I dried his hands and stood with him for a moment in that kitchen and remembered the hands of his youth, not yet marked in scars that ran around his wrists. had forgotten most of them but traced them now like the lines of a map. He was quiet. I wished that I had done things differently, in this kitchen, a long time ago. I wished that I had more whiskey. I wished that he had never hurt Jamie the way that he did.

But there was something different about him that I could not quite grasp; not his temper, which was sharp and needling but not entirely unlike how he had been before France. Instead, it was something in the tremor of his hands and the jerkiness of his limbs. Like he was pushed forward all the time, pushed and pushed and pushed.

"I'll fetch my coat," I told him. "And we'll see my little brother."

**x**

Mona lay with legs sprawled and arms thrown out, taking all the space in that bed like she thought I might snatch it from her once I stepped into the bedroom. The air was stale and bitter. She had been with a man whose cologne had stuck to her skin in a sticky lining. She had worn mascara and it stained her cheeks like soot, spread outward from her rubbing at her eyes this morning.

Mona had borrowed an old coat of mine, black in colour, a little fuzzed around its hem. I found it buried beneath her dress and shoes. I breathed its material and found it reeked of that same dour odour from the cologne of that man.

"Is that Arthur downstairs?"

I glanced at her. "Did you sleep with a corpse last night? The _stench_ on my coat, Mona –…"

"Well, he was a very bloody handsy corpse," she said, lifting her head from the pillow. I glimpsed smudges of black on the sheets and let out a small sigh. "You tell that Arthur Shelby to kiss your damn boots for even talking to him. Where was he, eh, after Bill? After your own brother – …"

I felt a sharp pain in my stomach when she trailed off. She had taken me by surprise, not allowing for any preparation. "After my own brother _what_ , Mona?"

"After Bill went and topped himself, Lola. After that."

The coat had been tainted, though it had not come from Mona nor her temporary lover. I dropped it onto the floorboards of my bedroom, which had been my bedroom as a little girl and now a woman, its walls papered in green pattern, striped in darker vines. Jamie had come into this bedroom as a little boy and slept alongside me whenever he suffered a nightmare or our mother fought with our father or Bill was in one of his moods. I used to stroke his hair, like I had stroked hers last night.

"Lola, I meant nothing by it," Mona said softly. "You know me, eh, always talking before I think it through – always making a mess of things, me –…"

I left the coat behind.

**x**

Stood at the bottom of the stairs, I looked down the length of the hall and saw that the door in the kitchen, which led to the backyard, had been left open. I walked into the kitchen and looked through the window at Arthur, who cupped a pigeon in his hands and spoke with his lips held close to its head. He had collected the bowls that had been flipped in the birds' fright and refilled them.

"Think 'e likes me, this one," he called to me. "Which one is 'e, then?"

"Bill knew the names, not me," I replied. I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "But we could pick new ones for them, if you'd like."

He looked at me, shifting from foot to foot. "I'd like that, Lo," he said gently, almost sheepishly. "Could come 'round sometime, when it suited ya – 'elp out with them birds and fix this wirin'."

His hands had been cleaned, but his knuckles still seemed puffy and even more prominently swollen when held around the pigeon. Arthur was not a stranger to me, I had known him all my life, and I felt there was something endearing in what he had said, not from his offering, but rather from how much he had _meant_ it. He had looked me in eye for more than a few seconds, something that Arthur had struggled to do since France, to really _look_ at me, like it pained him to do it. He had been sincere.

"That would be nice," I said. "Maybe after the hospital."

He seemed relieved, his smile wide and boyish, much like it had been in his younger years. "I'll get the wirin' from Charlie, reckon 'e 'as some lyin' 'round the yard someplace. It'll need a new latch too. But I won't be 'ere tonight. Gotta go back to London."

I watched him. "What business has Tommy in London?"

Arthur never looked away from me. "I weren't fightin' there, Lola – not like with our Jamie."

_Our Jamie._

"Throwing punches and taking them," I said. "What difference is there in any fight?"

There were habits that Arthur had not lost, not even in France, and it came in the clenching of his jaw whenever he wanted to hold back the truth, like if he ground his teeth together hard enough, his mouth could hold in the flood. He liked to water down truth, too, dilute it with softer words that dulled each killing word that managed to slip out despite his efforts.

"Tommy wants to expand the business," he said. "Went to London to make an impression. Might want me to stay up there a bit longer, 'e reckons. But I told 'im, I said, _Tom, I need to be 'round for Jamie_. It were business, Lo."

There it was, that crushing blow to my skull, that he had delivered with a lightness in his tone, an easiness that tried to comfort the hurt that came from him slipping off to London and leaving me here without him, leaving Jamie in that room, leaving and leaving and _leaving_ , because that was all we had ever done to each other.

"Polly will be busy this morning," I said. "Writing the cards and ordering flowers for those lads who weren't Jamie."

"It ain't like that, Lola." He placed the pigeon back into the loft, carefully shutting the latch. "It ain't like that at all. I didn't fuckin' kill no-one – that ain't all I fuckin' do in this fuckin' world, Lola. I 'elped Tom, is what I did. I did what 'ad to be done."

_Ain't no-one made for killin', Lo._

"No," I said. "Because they won't bother with the cards and flowers, this time."

**x**

Slipping out into the street, I followed behind Arthur. He rushed ahead to the car, opening its door for me and holding out his hand. Light drizzle fell overhead and gathered around the low peak of his cap. I took his hand and lifted my skirt, but he held me still and I glanced at him, confused.

"Where's your coat, Lo?"

"I can go without it," I said.

"You'll be cold." He shook his head. "You wait in the car and I'll run back in and find it."

"I know where it is, Arthur. I'm more cold standing here than I would be inside the car."

Reluctantly, he nodded and finally helped me into the car, closing the door behind me. He hopped into his side with more energy that I had expected from him, like he had forgotten all about what had been said in the backyard. I shifted in my seat and bumped against a small package folded in a delicate paper that crinkled against me. I moved it carefully, aware that it was something important.

Arthur glanced down at it. "Oh, aye – got somethin' for Jamie. For when 'e comes 'round. 'Cause 'e will come 'round. I know it. Got a good feelin'."

"What did you get him?"

He unfolded that delicate paper and revealed a beautiful grey cap with the most exquisite stitching around its lining. I caught sight of its label tucked beneath its fold and ogled its lettering, stunned that he had spent as much as he probably had, though Arthur seemed to mistake my surprise for something worse.

"It ain't like our caps, mind." He rewrapped it, tucking it back into place between us. "I know you don't want Jamie messin' 'round with the Blinders, and 'e won't – I'll make sure o' that, Lo. But last time that I saw 'im, I thought – well, the 'air is growin' back on 'im now, innit, but 'e might want to cover it for a while, too. Just – I were thinkin' o' the boy when I were in London, is all."

Though I sat with him in this car, in this same old street that I had always lived in, I felt that we sat in my kitchen after his fight with his father and I held him more closely than I ever had, cherished him and knew him; _loved_ him, again. The rain slopped against the windows of the car and cocooned into us into this warm place. I forgot about his bruised hands, his knuckles swollen and sore, when I reached out and touched him.

I said, "I don't want you to stay in London, Arthur."

He swallowed thickly, looking at my hand over his, covering his cuts, covering his scars patched over. "Gotta think o' the business. Got big things planned for us," he said quietly. "I made a lot o' promises."

"I know," I said.

His eyes had turned glossy and wet. "Some of those promises were to you," he said, like he had not heard me; part of me thought that he really had not heard, because he seemed far from me, in some foggy place. "Made too many fuckin' mistakes. But they need me, Lo. They still need me. You know that, don't you?"

"I know," I said again.

It came out more detached this time, because I had wanted to pretend for a little while longer. It had been nicer, to pretend.

**x**

Outside of the hospital, he turned off the engine and we sat motionless for a few minutes, neither of us wanting to step out into that murky blueness around us. He fixed his cap, though it had not needed any fixing at all, but Arthur had frantic hands that moved all the time, never still enough, looking eternally to hold and grasp and catch. He smoothed out his trousers, another habit. Then, without much warning, he turned and asked, "Who was that in the 'ouse, then?"

I looked over at him. "What?"

"Just thought there were someone knockin' about in your room."

"Must have been mice," I said lightly.

"Mice," he repeated. "Aye. Must 'ave been big fuckin' mice to make that much of a racket, eh? Give all the cats in Birming'am a run for their fuckin' money."

I laughed, shaking my head at him. "It wasn't a man up there, if that's what you were worried about, Arthur. It was Mona. She had nowhere else to sleep, so she came to mine. You forget that once you date a Shelby in our world, nobody else would want you. Too much of a risk."

"That ain't true," he grumbled lowly. "I never stopped you from datin' no-one else. You're a free woman."

I raised my eyebrows at him, tilting my chin toward my chest in doubt.

"All right," he mumbled. "I never encouraged it neither."

"Given her line of work, Mona and her friends tell me all about the men that come to visit them in Birmingham," I said. I leaned closer to him and he leaned right back with a wary look on his face. "Because it isn't just Polly who knows all. You remember that, before you question me."

"I weren't questionin' ya," he said feebly.

Out of spite, I added, "But Mona reckons I'd make a fine living from a job like hers."

His meek demeanour slipped away. "You fuckin' will not."

"Oh, aye, queue out the door," I said, finding humour again. I had always had a talent for winding him up. "Mona thinks I could be a Madam within the year, if I play my cards right. Like you said, I'm a free woman."

I smiled at him and finally climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut behind me. It was probably a bit cruel to toy with him, but I felt Arthur had deserved it. He and his brothers had an entitlement that bothered me more than I had ever told him.

He rushed to catch up with me after locking his own door behind him. He ripped off his cap and plopped it on my head against the rain, about to shrug off his coat when I put my hand on his arm to stop him. We were almost inside, anyway.

"Tom got 'imself a secretary," Arthur said, feigning an easiness in his walk as we stepped into the entrance.

"I heard."

"Could do with one me-self," he continued. "Got lots o' paperwork what needs doin'. Offerin' good wages an' all."

"I'll let Mona know," I said. "She's interested in secretary work."

Arthur sighed. "Startin' to wish it 'ad been a fuckin' fella upstairs after all," he muttered. "Would 'ave been easier to knock 'im up and down Watery Lane than to deal with Mona-fuckin'-McCarthy whisperin' in your fuckin' ear."

**x**

Slumped in my chair, my face pressed uncomfortably into the wooden arm, I felt the heaviness of my eyelids dipping shut. It had been hours spent sitting with Jamie. Arthur had not spoken much at all. He had taken off his sopping coat and hung it on the back of his chair, his cap taken from my hair and left on the bedside table. He had pulled his chair closer to mine and touched my wrist, and I had not told him to move away.

It lulled me into a hazy stupor, lying sideways like that on my chair. I felt his hand move to my hair, frizzy and matted from the rain. He touched it hesitantly, smoothing down those plucky strands that curled and fizzed. When he felt reassured that I would not shove him away, he stroked my hair a little more, like I had done for Mona.

He had dimmed the lamp, too, for the sky outside had turned dark and purple. The hospital was quiet and stuffy. I drifted off.

**x**

Sometime in the night, there came the shattering of glass. I jolted, suddenly wide awake and catching myself by gripping the arms of my chair. The flowers on the bedside table had fallen and I squinted dumbly against the yellow light from the lamp, which seemed far too strong even after it had been dimmed, my hand blindly reaching out to switch it off. I thought that I had slipped from my chair and knocked the bedside table with my boots, toppling the vase. Letting out a deep breath, I grasped the beaded string and almost pulled down to flush us back into night, my eyes glancing over to my little brother for a brief second.

Jamie was looking at me. He had woken up and tried to tell me; he had knocked the flowers to tell me. His hand reached for mine and I immediately grasped it, a choked sound rising from my throat, trying desperately to hold him but still be gentle with him all at once.

"Jamie," I whispered. "Jamie –…"

I turned to tell Arthur and found that he was already gone.


	4. four

_four_

* * *

The nurses had formed a fresh morning routine for him, because the bed had withered his limbs; massaged the shrivelled muscles in his calves before carting him to his wheelchair and taking him out into the hall, helping him to stand, letting him walk by himself while counting out the tiles that passed beneath his bare feet, slow and sluggish to start, stuttering but more sure around his final lap, flopping back into the chair with beading sweat at his temples. He had become the golden boy of his ward, with the nurses fawning over him – called him their little gentleman, their pleasure to treat.

Jamie had pink cheeks whenever the nurses left him; that light colour meant the world to me, for his skin had been sickly-white when he had lain in that bed, wilting while in the prime of his youth. It had changed though. He rose from his bed on wobbly arms and scooted to the edge of his bed. He still told me that he could do things for himself.

"Give over, Lola," he would say. "Like a mother hen, you are, pecking and pecking at me. Cutting the crust off my toast like you did when I was a kid! Taking bites whenever I'm not looking, too. I'm not a kid anymore, you know. I can do it for myself."

"I know, Jay," I would say.

Yet my hands reached for the butter-knife to scrape it clean of sticky jam, to cut away those crusts he had always loathed in childhood, to then take another dollop of strawberry jam and lather it across that toast for him while he watched with an amused smile. He ate his toast how he liked it. He rarely stopped me if I scrubbed his cheeks with a napkin afterward to wipe the sticky spots of jam left behind.

**x**

Mona brought him sweets and ate half of them before Jamie had even swallowed his first, because Mona chatted so much to him that she hardly noticed the dwindling pile in her hand. She dragged him from his bed and helped him into the wheelchair, though he protested that he no longer needed it, his face beetroot in colour because he had always liked Mona a little more than he probably wanted to say aloud.

She pushed him toward the window in his room, scooted his chair close against the wall to wash him in sunlight – what little sunlight came from between the parting clouds in Birmingham, that is.

Jamie joked that he would tan his pale skin. His crop of dark hair used to lighten to blond when he was younger, playing in the fields for hours with the other boys and returning with skin smeared in mud, his knees littered in scrapes and cuts.

If he ever left dried clumps of mud in the carpet, I told Bill that I had forgotten to clean off my boots at the doorstep and sent Jamie off to his own room to wait while Bill told me off. Sometimes, he made me clean the carpet in front of him. Sometimes, he muttered one low and gruff dismissal – _just mud, Dolores, leave it_ _be._

Bill had funny moods. He had never known full happiness; he had balanced on the edge of it, had looked it from afar and studied it like something other-worldly. I doubted that even Bill predicted his own shifts in mood because it never seemed to be one little thing that bothered him. It was all things, all at once, in their entirety. Never called me Lola, never called me sister. Dolores was all that he ever said.

_Leave it be, Dolores._

**x**

Jamie slept deeply and rarely moved about in his bed, not like he used to. I often worried that he had slipped off into that black and unending sleep that had taken him for so much time. I watched him while he slept and listened to his soft breaths, made sure that they never became raspy and slow from saliva caught in his throat. He swallowed it for himself. He pulled open his own eyelids without nurses doing it for him to check that his pupil contracted against harsh, beading drops of light. He could do it for himself, now.

Perched on his windowsill, I watched the droplets splatter the windowpanes, dripping downward, disappearing into thickened lines of grime clotted around the panels. I looked at the bristling trees that dotted the courtyard behind the hospital. Between the trees, I saw the looming windows on the opposite side of the building, patterned with looming windows that showed white blurs passing – nurses in their starched uniforms, pushing carts or patients in wheelchairs or walking alongside doctors at brisk paces.

"Mona told me that Arthur came to the hospital."

I had been lost in some foggy daydream about those nurses and the war. His words startled me.

"Does it upset you, knowing that he was here? Does he frighten you?"

Though his room was cocooned in warmth, I felt the coolness of the windowpane bleed through the flimsy sleeves of my blouse and seep further still. Jamie slumped against his pillows, idly pulling at tufts that poked from his blankets. His shoulders rolled in a limp shrug and he looked unsure.

"No, not really," he said. He straightened against his pillows and added, "Do you remember when Bill took me on the train to London and showed me those dogs fighting, in that basement somewhere, with all those stalls and the men standing 'round paying for their mutt to win?"

The droplets lashed the windowpanes even more heavily and the curtains trembled against ripples of cold that crept through the gaps. I stood from the windowsill and crossed the room to perch beside him, resting my hand on the bump of his knee beneath his blankets.

"I remember," I said gently. "Is that what you think about, when you think about Arthur? Lots of people say he fights like – like an animal."

I swallowed the bile that soon followed, because it hurt me to think of those things that were said about Arthur. Jamie placed his hand over mine and I smiled at him, though it was not real, not genuine.

"No," Jamie said. "Not when I fought him. I thought about it when he fought Jack Buckley, from those flats down by Milton Road. Arthur almost killed him, too. But the other lads caught him quicker, pulled him out and held him down – took four fellas to hold him down, you know, and still we thought Arthur would break loose. He had that same look that Bill had. That was about three weeks before we sparred."

"What about the dogs?"

"Bill brought me to London for my birthday," he said distantly. "He promised to take me 'round the shops but he brought me to this warehouse instead, down into this basement where all these fellas stood around stalls and watched these mutts fight each other and Bill bet on this one mutt that looked like it had already been through enough fights, you know, covered in funny scars and its ears shredded. Well, the fight started and it was horrible – all those men shouting, roaring at those dogs stuck in those stalls with walls too high for them to jump out and run off."

The curtains bristled again and tickled the floorboards in a whisper.

"The little dog lost," Jamie said, "and Bill stormed off because he tossed away all that money on him. I stayed behind and watched that little dog in the corner, all bloodied and tired and still with those men shouting and screaming at it while waiting for the next dog to come and finish it off. I had never felt more sorry for anything in all my life, Lola, than I had for that dog."

"Jamie –…"

"After he almost killed Buckley, I found Arthur before his brothers did," he continued suddenly, like the words were forced from him, his throat constricted and making him sound hoarse. "He looked so much like that dog left behind in the stall. I started to think about how different it is in those boxing matches, whenever Arthur steps into the ring, because the men start screaming at him and shouting at him like those men shouted at that dog – goading him, taunting him. It's not like that when the others are fighting, because only the coach yells at them. But everybody pushes Arthur on."

I traced the bumpy scarring that marred his handsome features, drawing out his paleness, making him look haggard and tired again, when before he had looked so much better. He pulled his hand away and yanked tufts from his blankets once more, his lips held in a tight line.

Quietly, he said, "Before I fought him, the men used to place bets on him, even though we usually only placed bets for the big fights, you know – proper rules and an audience to watch and all that. But not for Arthur. I used to wish that I had been old enough for the war. I used to wish that I had been old enough to fight in France with Bill and Arthur and the others. Is it cowardly for me to think that I was lucky not to be sent there, Lo?"

I felt the searing heat of tears. "No," I croaked, leaning forward to press my lips against his temple and then his cheeks "Not at all."

"Don't send him away." Jamie glanced at the wispy pile of fluff that gathered on the tiles, thrown from his hands. "If he comes to visit again, don't send him away. Because he doesn't frighten me. He doesn't upset me. He just makes me think that – that we could have done more for Bill."

"What do you mean, for Bill?"

"Arthur reminds me of him," he mumbled. "But I think Arthur has a better chance than Bill did. There was no saving Bill."

"You think Arthur can be saved?"

"I think Arthur had had too many fights already," my little brother said, meeting my eyes. "Then came France to finish him off."

**x**

Mona tapped against his doorframe to draw me into the hall while he slept that night, holding up some posh bag bought in town, filled with two pairs of pyjamas and slippers for him. She was leaned against a wall when I found her, pulling his door shut behind me. She passed me the bag and watched while I examined the first pair – powder-blue in colour, soft cotton. The other was a light mint colour, rich and folded at the collar for him. I kissed her cheek to thank her. She caught my wrist and held me back.

"Lo, wait a minute," she said. "When I asked you if you had much saved from what Bill left, I was serious – those pyjamas cost a pretty fucking penny. What'll you do, when it runs out?"

I felt my cheeks flush. "Keep it down, Mona."

"Worried Jamie will hear it? He knew before all this, you know that. What'll do you?"

"I'll start looking for jobs once I can bring Jamie home," I replied. "Not now. Not here. Please, Mona."

She looked away from me, arms crossed. Her eyes rose from the tiles beneath her boots and met mine with an unusual malice. "So, Tommy whistled and his lapdog went running after him all the way to London. You didn't hear, Lo? Whole street was talking about it this morning. Arthur made a right mess of one of those restaurants up there. Owned by Italians, apparently. I heard he made some Italian swallow _glass_. Not the first time, either. Been sent to London a few times to do just that."

I steadied myself at her words. "I never controlled Arthur. I asked him to apologise to Jamie –…"

"Right. Right, because Arthur is in there now, is he, _apologising_?"

"Jamie forgave him, in his own way."

"Jamie has a good excuse, getting his head knocked 'round. What's your excuse?"

She stung me badly and seemed to know it. "Thank you for bringing the pyjamas and slippers," I said. "I'll let Jamie know you were here."

"I care about you, Lola. I care about Jamie. Arthur will come back 'round here with some fucking flowers and tell you that he popped out for a little bit – he'll make any excuse. He won't tell you about the Italians. He'll tell you whatever keeps you quiet."

I had turned back to his room but paused and let my eyes fall shut for a moment. "Do you want me to hate him?"

She met my eyes.

"Do you want me to spend my life hating that man, Mona?" I asked. "I know what he does, I know that he's killed people – here and in France, I know that he has _killed_ people. And you know what? I knew that about Bill, too."

"Bill had other problems," she said. "Bill paid for it –…"

"You want Arthur to top himself too, is that it? Would that be enough of an apology for you?"

She pushed from the wall and stood straight. "Lola, I'm looking out for you and that boy in there."

"I have looked out for him all my life," I said. "I practically raised him, called him mine. Do you really think I would do anything that would put him in danger? _He_ forgave Arthur and that was always _his_ choice. Can't that be enough?"

She unfolded her arms and shrugged. "Aye – until Arthur's next apology and the one that comes after that, because that is all he'll bring to your door if you tie yourself to him, Lola – fuck-ups and apologies, one after the other, until he wears you down from it. It'll be the noose for Arthur Shelby, whether the governor ties it or he ties it for himself like –…"

She heard herself and pursed her lips in regret.

"Like Bill," I said tiredly. "I know. But hatred made Bill and that was what took him, in the end, not the noose and not the lifestyle. I will never let it make Jamie and I will never let it make me. I want his life to be _more_ than Watery Lane – to be more than another boy beaten by Arthur Shelby and more than the brother of Bill Callaghan. I'm _trying_ , Mona."

Curtly, she nodded. "I know. But while you're protecting Jamie from this world, make sure you protect yourself as well, Lo."

She left me alone in the hall, holding his pyjamas and slippers in a posh bag, listening to her steps disappear into the dull patter of rain against the windows that lined the hallway.

**x**

I fiddled with the worn latch of our front door and kicked it apart, shrugging off my coat. I planned to bathe and change my old dress for something better, before preparing a little bag for Jamie, because the nurses had told me that he would be released soon enough. I wanted desperately to clean the house, mop the tiled floors in the kitchen, dust the cabinets fetch new blankets to make his bed. I had been so caught up in planning ahead that the squeaking whine of the latch on the loft made me pause in the hall.

I walked into the kitchen and looked out the window, through the grey mist of drizzle that dripped from our rooftop and filled the backyard in puddles. I glimpsed his shoulders hunched forward around the loft, fiddling with the wiring that he had half-peeled back, talking to the pigeons while he worked. He had taken the door that formed our gate into the back-alley from its hinges and propped it against the wall.

"Arthur?"

There was something manic about him, again, and it was more than drink that made him so tightly wound that all his movements were jittery and wild. He looked mad and unsettled, turning toward me, and snorting in that funny way that he did. He paused for a moment, seeming caught between thoughts, because he opened his mouth to say one thing but I felt he had planned something else.

"I promised ya that I would fix the wirin' for the birds," he said. "I wanna fix that gate, too. Any old tosser could take off that plank o' wood and get into the 'ouse. Ain't safe for you an' Jamie."

I softened and moved toward him. "And what would they want in that house, eh? All my jewels, my diamonds?"

What came from him was not quite a laugh, but his lips quirked. He dropped his pliers and turned to shift that flimsy door, gripping it around its splintered edges to lift it, something that was normally not much of a task for him. But he swept forward in a stumble and made an awful sound, like a moan from suppressed pain. He hunched forward while he caught his breath. Startled, I touched his shoulders and he flinched.

"Arthur, are you –…"

"I'm all right," he said. "I'm fine, Lo."

His hand swatted at me, but I caught hold of his shirt and tugged it upward, glimpsing the stained skin beneath. Spotted purple from bruising, it trailed around the protruding lines of his ribs and reached the bumps of his spine. I dropped the shirt and stared at him, stared at the guilt and misery that overtook him, for he looked so desperately alone that I thought Jamie really had seen Arthur for who he was, even if the rest of the world dismissed him as another solider lost to war.

"It's all right, Arthur," I said softly. "It's all right, come here –…"

I drew him toward me and wrapped my arms around him; gently, at first, afraid to press against those bruises and hurt him, but his own arms swept around me and crushed me against him. I felt him shudder, felt his lips against my throat as he leaned into the crook of my neck and let me brush through his hair, knotted and tangled and not at all like how he usually kept it swept back from his face.

"Who did that to you?" I asked.

He mumbled something against my skin, then pulled away. His eyes were rimmed in a heavy red, his cheeks ruddy and dry. He made that funny snort, pinching his nostrils and breathing out hard. Then he crumpled again, running his hands through his hair and gripping it tightly to pull at his own scalp, like Jamie had yanked those tufts from the blanket. He pulled again and again, until I took his wrists and lowered them.

I cupped the back of his head and pressed our foreheads together.

"We can share it, Arthur," I whispered, tapping his temple, "all that sound and colour in there. I can take half and you can hold onto the other – that'll make it easier, won't it? We'll share it."

His lips were ground together to hold in the agonised moan that left him, shaking his head madly back and forth, but he still scrunched my blouse in his hold like he never wanted to push me away at all. He finally spoke, his voice awash with sorrow.

"I'm sorry, Lo."

_fuck-ups and apologies, one after the other_

He kept his forehead against mine. "If I told you what goes on in 'ere," he said, touching his own temple, "you would never want me 'round you or Jamie. I can't – I _can't_ –…"

I felt my brows scrunch at his tone, knowing that there was something more there, something that had set off this fear in him. It hit me, then.

"Who told you that?"

He wanted to look at the ground, but I tilted his jaw toward me and made him look into my eyes.

The rain harshened the wrinkles around his mouth as he tried to battle the tremble in his lips, his hands rubbing my arms as if I was cold, but I thought it was Arthur who felt that bitter chill.

"No-one," he said.

Before the war, when we had still been together, Arthur used to tell small fibs about fighting boys in other neighbourhoods or drinking a little too much in the local pub with his father. Arthur had made most of his mistakes around his father, and most of his lies followed nights out with that man. But he was no longer as a teenager and I had tired of fibs. It deflated me and made me slither away from his hold.

"Jamie woke up," I told him.

I wanted to hurt him. I wanted it to sting. I had hardly stepped into the kitchen before I felt him behind me again, turning me back around to face him.

"Wait, Lola – is Jamie – is 'e all right?"

"All right," I repeated bitterly. "You would know how he was if you had bothered to stay."

"I were needed in London," he blurted out. "Tom sent for me. I told 'im that I promised to stay with you and Jamie – _wanted_ to stay with you and Jamie. But I – I went and I 'urt some people, 'cause what – what else would they need me for up there, eh?"

His laugh was much like it had been earlier, forced and painful. His hands spasmed and I glanced down at them.

"Is that all that you did in London?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Don't do that,' I said. "Don't make us both look stupid here."

He worked his jaw. "I took snow," he said. "I been takin' for a while now. Makes me – function. 'Cause I ain't been doin' it on me own so well, lately."

Somehow, it seemed to hollow out my stomach in dread, but did not surprise me. I had suspected there was something wrong with his jerkiness, his constant sniffling. It had just never occurred to me that it might be snow, because I knew little about it other than what Mona had told me. She had taken it before, pressed into neat lines on the vanities of the hotel rooms that were booked for her by more wealthy clients. She said it set her alight and made the world clearer. She said that without it, she felt dull and tired.

Arthur looked like that, now; dull and tired, with a blurry filter to the world around him.

"I came home to clean this house for Jamie," I told him calmly. "Because he might come home soon. I want to get him new blankets, new pillows. I want him to be safe here. I won't let anyone near him who isn't _good_ for him –…"

"No-one will touch 'im," he said, "no-one will even –…"

"You aren't good for him," I said. "Not like this."

He straightened, moving back from me. He had prepared himself and I could have bet that he had _imagined_ this, expected it more than anything else.

"All right," he muttered. "I – I can send someone 'round to finish the wirin' and the gate."

I grasped his hands before they could slip from mine.

"Or you could finish the job yourself, Arthur," I said. "Still a whole week before Jamie might be allowed home, with what the nurses told me. You could be ready by then, couldn't you?"

He caught onto what I meant, his eyes wide. "I'll fix it, Lo," he said hastily. "I got one more trip to London and then I'll tell Tom that John can 'ave 'is turn. I'm done with it. I don't want it."

"No more snow," I told him, letting him rest his forehead against mine. "No disappearing on me, no lying. I know that no-one can control a Shelby, Arthur, and that isn't what I want to do. But I want to trust you. I want – I want you to be around me. Around Jamie."

"You can trust me," he said. "I'm tryin', Lo."

**x**

The hospital was quiet, three nights later. I sat in that same armchair with a book tucked against my lap, sliding downward as my eyes struggled to read the paragraphs that soon blurred together into smudged ink. Jamie slept with his hand curled in mine, though his hold had turned loose once he fully drifted off. I turned off the lamp for him and prepared myself to sleep, too.

Before, the nurses used to warn me whenever it was turning dark outside, but ever since they had seen that Arthur Shelby stalked the halls and sat with me in the early weeks of Jamie being here, they had left me well alone. He had that kind of aura around him.

"Ms Callaghan?"

Yellow light saturated the hall and fuzzed the silhouette of the nurse who stood there whispering to me. I clambered from my chair and moved toward her, confused. I glanced back at Jamie, but he had not stirred.

"Mr Shelby would like to speak with you. He's waiting just outside."

"Speak of the Devil," I muttered. "Well, tell him to come in."

"He asked that you meet him in the hall, Ms Callaghan."

Her shoes echoed against the cold tiles. The hall was empty, lonely. I followed after her, turning the corner and standing still, eyes drawn toward the dark figure that strolled toward me with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"Hello, Dolores," Tommy said. "Figured we ought to have a chat, just you and me. What do you say?"


	5. five

_five_

* * *

White droplets slid along the flowers, speckling dew onto the cropped grass underneath. Tommy found a bench and dried it with a handkerchief unfolded from his breast-pocket before he sat himself down, taking out a familiar silver box from which he tapped out a fresh cigarette. He held it out to me, placed another between his own lips, flicking a lighter; mine first, his second.

He breathed out, sinking back against the bench. He seemed unbothered by the mist that soaked through his coat, his knowing eyes sweeping around the courtyard of the hospital before he settled on what he wanted to say. Tommy meant what he said.

"The last time that we spoke," he exhaled, wispy tendrils spilling from his mouth and lashing his cheeks, "I stood at your front door and asked if you had heard of the Irish girl working in _The Garrison_ , from Galway."

The mist turned his skin to marbled blue. I felt a smile spread on my lips. "Tell me, Tommy, is it really that heavy?"

He dragged his eyes away from some distant world and looked at me, an eyebrow raised.

"That crown," I said, waving my hand near his dark hair. "You must find yourself toppling over, trying to hold that up."

Though his expression remained smooth and cold, his eyes held a humour that he had not lost in the war. "I thought you of all people would understand, balancing that halo like you do," he murmured. "From what Arthur tells me, you recently walked on water and performed various healing miracles in your spare time."

"Had to start somewhere," I said. "Is that what you're wanting, then? For me to heal you?"

"Not today, Dolores," he replied easily. "But perhaps tomorrow."

"Lola suits me fine, Tommy." I breathed in the bitter chill that swept across us and burrowed into my coat even more, the cuffs drawn over my fists. "And what brings you here tonight, if not to tell me something about Arthur?"

He cocked his head, lips scrunched around his cigarette in consideration. He drew up in his seat, having been hunched forward from habit. "Now, what could I possibly tell you about Arthur that you don't already know, eh? Sometimes I think you know my brother better than anybody. Even Pol."

I met his cool stare. "Sometimes," I repeated. "But other times?"

"Other times, I think you forget that Arthur builds fantasies in his head –…"

The scoff that fled from me came in a white cloud, though I quickly plugged my mouth with my cigarette and shook my head, laughing to myself.

"Come off it, Tommy."

"He does." He studied me. "Arthur needs very little to believe you love him again, Dolores. That he can mend his mistakes, that he can do better this time. Until he can't."

I found it harder to laugh; it died on my tongue, my laughter, left my saliva bitter and cool.

"Because Arthur isn't the only one who builds fantasies in his head," Tommy finished. "Is he?"

I felt a tremor in my leg that made me bounce my boot against the stone path beneath our shoes. I had followed him through the mud to sit on this bench and looked at the brown spots that had crusted the edges.

"I care about your brother," I said lowly. "I care about him very much. I never stopped caring."

"I know." He ground his cigarette into the wooden arm on his side of the bench. "Arthur knows it, too. He walks a little taller because of it. Looks into mirrors now, when before he used to do anything to avoid them. He talks about the future when before he only spoke of the past and seemed to forget that there was any present for him at all. He talks about the future only when you're in it. Arthur would do better with you."

"So, what worries you? Don't you want him to be happy and – and to think of the future?"

"Happiness is not something that comes easily to Shelbys, Dolores," he said, "and if it does come, it is nothing if not temporary. Arthur would do anything for you."

I mimicked him and ground my own cigarette out against the planks that lined the bench beneath us, meeting his eyes soon afterward. I had found my footing, like I wobbled on a tight-rope. I recalled what Arthur had talked about in the backyard the last time that I had seen him and thought it perfectly clear what had brought Tommy to the hospital, after all.

"Ah, so that's it," I hummed.

His stare was distrustful. The war had made him cold. He hunched forward again, the collar of his coat drawn around his sharp jawline, his narrow nose slick with droplets that fell from the trees overhead. He said nothing, but I caught the sheen in his eyes and latched onto it.

"Arthur would do anything for me," I said, leaning toward him, "which means he is less likely to do something for _you_ – like London. Arthur would rather stay in Birmingham and John has the kids, so who will you send, Thomas?"

"Tommy suits me fine," he replied easily. "Though I cannot help but wonder what'll happen."

"With Arthur?"

"With all of it," he said. "Because he thinks you'll mend him, make him better, that you'll soften his temper and make him right in the ways that France put him wrong."

His eyes met mine and I felt there was the old Tommy in there and I suddenly remembered a date that I had had with Arthur when he had wanted to bring me for a stroll along the canal and I burst into laughter.

"What?"

I looked at Tommy, still giddy. "I was thinking of that time – well, John was just a little boy and he had to see the doctor and Polly took him, but she didn't trust you alone in the house. So she forced Arthur to bring you with him when he came to take me on a little date."

The coldness thawed. He let out a chuckle, looking out at the gardens again as he shook his head. "All the places in Birmingham to take a girl," he said, "and Arthur takes her to the fucking canal with his little brother. Always been a romantic deep down, our Arthur."

"He tried to talk about the water, do you remember?"

"He wanted to impress you," Tommy murmured. "Wanted to seem more intelligent and said it was the kind a poet would write about or some other nonsense. Almost pushed me in when I asked if he could _name_ a fucking poet."

Together, we laughed and that distance seemed to lessen between us. I felt my smile loosen and fall away. "Arthur had his troubles before the war, too. Just has more, now. But I want him to be happy and I want him to be safe. I still – still love him. I wanted him to be sorry for what he did to Jamie and I think he meant it when he apologised. Jamie forgives him and – and I do still love him.

I had said it aloud and it filled my chest with lightness.

Tommy heaved a sigh that tightened his shoulders. He scrubbed his face with his hand. "I know," he said, catching my eye. "Polly knew it the moment that she sat with you in your brother's room."

"Guessed it from that Gypsy intuition, did she?" I joked.

"No," he muttered. "She said that if Arthur turned up to that hospital to see your brother the first time 'round and you didn't put him in a bed in the next room over, then Arthur had some chance left."

I snorted. "It was occupied. I hear it's free now, though."

Tommy grew more serious like he had been before, his face drawn and tired. "Whatever promises Arthur has made you, he will break them."

I rested my chin against my fist and cocked my head toward him, smiling warmly. "But he'll do his best, before that," I told him, "and he'll do his best after, Tom."

This time, he did not correct me, and allowed himself to be _Tom_ , the lanky boy that I had known in childhood.

**x**

Taking languid steps forward, we walked back toward the looming wooden doors that led inside the hospital, its stone arches yawning overhead. I glanced at Tommy, his greyish cap washing out his pallor. I felt myself adrift, looking at him, because he had not always been so sure in his walk, so sure in the steeliness of his eyes that swept around the hall.

Whenever Arthur walked, he stalked, shoulders bunched together, bow-legged. He looked around himself for enemies and omens and it seemed to wind him tighter and tighter while he waited for them. Often, Tommy seemed to glide forward from one place to another, like he had drawn a path for himself and no other existed; all that passed in his peripheral was unimportant, swept aside, until some shadow seemed much too familiar to him and he paused to take it in. But never did he seem to find it.

I suspected that I had figured out what he looked for and slowed to a halt, mere doors away from Jamie. Tommy held himself still too, though his body seemed to hum with a need for movement. The soldiers from France all suffered that same need. Arthur tapped his fingertips against his leg and John flicked a toothpick with his tongue. I thought it impossible to know what Tommy did to stem that need in himself but felt I had touched it briefly during our walk.

"Have you spoken to that girl from Galway, since she ran away?"

He lifted his eyes from the tiles. "What girl would that be, Dolores?"

"Fantasist, you said," I smiled. "I wonder if that applies to more than one Shelby brother."

His hand slid under his coat to find that old cigarette box. "I never fantasise about what I cannot make happen," he said, "and John lacks imagination as much as he lacks common sense."

"No wonder Arthur wants to spend more time with the birds," I noted, smiling at him again. "With brothers so cruel."

Tommy held the cigarette in his mouth but made no motion to light it. He had looked behind me, at some distant shadow there. He had not forgotten the war even if he liked to feign that he had.

"It would do him well, Tom," I said. "To care for the birds; to do something with his hands other than – than what you might want, in London. It might make him happy."

Finally, his eyes tore away from that dark, violent spot behind me. He looked at me, rolling that cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other. "And what did we say about happiness, Lola?"

**x**

The rain had quietened down. Jamie slept in the same position, curled sideways, facing the wall. I brushed aside his hair and lay alongside him. I reached to switch off the lamp again and saw a fresh bouquet of flowers with a card tucked between the petals, matching the flowers that had been delivered the first night in this room. Like that night, I never bothered to read the card, and sank down alongside my brother to sleep.

**x**

Jamie had a migraine, he told me. He wanted the curtains drawn and the windows shut. I brushed through his hair but he sank lower into his blankets and mumbled that he wanted quiet time, alone. So, I braided my own hair, tucked a scarf around my neck and shrugged on my coat. I looked at him before I left his room, awkward and unsure.

"See you soon, Jamie," I said softly. "I'll tell the nurses not to bother you. You should be home soon, anyway. You'll feel better there."

"Leave me be, Lola."

I stood there a moment longer; then left him be.

**x**

There was a new door in the backyard. The gate had been taken down, reattached with cleaner hinges and painted rich red. The rusted wiring for the birds had been replaced. I filled the birds' bowls and brought a chair from the kitchen out into the garden to sit and watch them while they ate, tapping at the wiring if one tried to take more than his fair share.

I clucked at them like Bill used to do and felt too much time had passed for me to fully comprehend – the war had been drawn out and each day had been tortuous, so that everything that happened before and after it had seemed blurry and quick.

But I felt centred, because things had changed.

I had planned it all out. Jamie would be released from hospital and return _home_ – I would make it home for him again for him. It felt like he had been spared in that boxing match with Arthur for this chance in his life to have better, to know a life beyond this street, beyond Birmingham. I would find a good job for myself.

I had a knack for figures and could learn anything if given half a chance. I wished, in the small backyard of our old house, that I had tried harder in school. Jamie had needed me and Bill was hardly around and I often wondered if my mother even remembered she had had another child at all. What good had my father been, living in Ireland?

He had never been any use.

Gambled until he ran out of cash and borrowed from cousins for the ferry and then he would turn up at our door with his battered suitcase and our mother would let him in and he would darken our presence until he found himself fed-up and left for Ireland all over again. He threatened to take us with him and my mother would wail and slap at his chest and arms. It sometimes spilled into the street. The neighbours would watch. I still felt that burning embarrassment whenever I thought about how I had been hauled out in the arms of my father, scratched by my mother as she tried to pull me back into the house.

But things had changed. I would make it better for Jamie than it had ever been for me.

**x**

Arthur came to the house in the afternoon, with flowers tucked into the crook of his elbow. I took them and thought of what Tommy had said, watching as Arthur settled himself in the backyard, tapping at the wiring of the loft. He fell back into old habits quite easily. He had learned the pattern of our old house, remembered which step creaked on the staircase and which cabinet held the teacups and which held our tea-towels and where the spare key for the backyard gate had been kept, tucked overhead the shelf by the sink.

I followed him out and thanked him for the flowers. He was sheepish, waving it off, but he looked pleased with a pinkness to his cheeks. I was afraid to temper him, to ruin that wonderful softness that had swept him away with his daydreams. I stepped beside him to look at the birds like I knew that he wanted and felt his shoulder bump against mine, for he stood even closer. When he spoke, it was quiet and tapered around the edges with hope.

He opened the loft and took out the first pigeon that had been sat nearest the door. "Right, then," he said, "what about Richard?"

I laughed and stroked the small, grey head of the pigeon that blinked at us both, cocking its head this way and that. "Think of the awful nickname he might get from the other birds, Arthur."

"Sounds proper smart to me, Richard. Think of another, then."

"Toby."

"Toby? Where'd you pull that from?"

He looked up at me with a strand of hair falling forward, because he had not bothered to smooth it back against his scalp this morning and it was parted on either side which was unusual for him, but I found I quite liked it and reached to touch his hair.

"I don't know," I shrugged, smiling at the silliness of him. "Just like the name. Don't you think it suits him?"

Arthur stared at me a moment too long, then caught himself and cleared his throat. "Toby it is, yeah. Nice name, that."

He took another bird from the loft once Toby had been safely settled on the wood-chipping coated floor. I watched him cradle the bird against his chest and turn its little head toward me, though its dark eyes blinked blankly around itself.

"Arthur Junior," I said.

He snorted. "Look alike, do we?"

"Hm. Got your scowl, doesn't he?"

For almost an hour, he took out birds and we spent a little while naming them all sorts of funny things, teasing each other. I walked in his daydream with him and pretended that we stood in a nicer backyard than mine, not coated in grime and old wood-chippings, and that the house behind us was as nice as those beautiful houses we had seen in Westfield on that day we spent together, wandering their neighbourhood.

"Lo," he said, "I want to see Jamie this afternoon, if it's still all right with ya."

I shrugged. "If it's all right with Jamie, it's all right with me. But be gentle with him, Arthur, he's been having headaches."

"'eadaches? Is it from – from the fight?"

Again, I shrugged. I held a bird in my hands, a little one that we had named Rodney. "I'll talk to the nurses about it. He's supposed to come home this week and I'm afraid – I'm afraid if he has those headaches more often, they'll want to keep him in there. But I – I want him home now, Arthur. I want him with me."

"'e will be, Lola," he said fiercely. "I'll get 'im the best care, won't want for nothin' –…"

"I know, Arthur. I know."

Silence swallowed the backyard and snipped at the edges of our daydream, which fluttered down like it had been a curtain around us. The sunlight, which was as dull as it had been on any other day in Birmingham, seemed much too bright somehow. The cold lapped at us. The birds looked pitiful, in their little loft. I had the sudden urge to pop the latch and let them off into that grey clouds overhead.

"I got a little surprise for Jamie."

I looked up at him. "The cap?"

"No, no," he mumbled. "It were – well, can I show ya?"

The birds seemed to look between us, then at the clouds.

**x**

Stood outside my front-door with him, I watched him straighten out his cap and coat. He wanted to wash his face and hands too, before he had left, though I could not really understand just what was so important to him about walking through Watery Lane like we had done so many times over in our lives. It held the same row of houses, the same families behind each door. I thought that perhaps that budding Shelby empire had made him want to look more presentable, but then he came out from our house, closed the door behind him, and held out his arm to me.

Dumbly, I looked down at his arm and then back up at his face. I smirked to myself, because he looked resolutely ahead of himself, his mouth held in a tight line.

"What's this, Arthur?"

He cleared his throat, another old habit. "I were just wantin' to – to walk with ya."

"Escort me, you mean?"

His face scrunched tight. "If that is the term you would like to use, Lola, then fine - escort ya."

I snickered at him and took his arm in mine. Though I found him funny, it was still a sign from him, one that would be taken by all the folk in Watery Lane that I walked with Arthur, that I was _with_ him. It meant a lot to him, I could tell. He kept his head high, even if there were not that many people around this afternoon. I spotted some of the older women whose heads turned toward us, eyes dropping to our arms. That was what he wanted, I assumed.

"D'you Jamie will be all right with – us?"

I glanced up at him. "And what are we, Arthur?"

He kept his stare focused on the path ahead. "Dunno what we are now. Just know what I'd like us to be."

**x**

_The Garrison_ had changed, too. He had taken out its worn stools and tired chairs and replaced them, bringing in lush chairs lined in red velvet. Golden trimmings hung around the skirting and the bar was coated in whitish marble. Like the wiring of the loft and the flimsy door in the backyard, he had made it all new again, fresh and glossy and polished. But the floorboards creaked beneath my old boots. It was still itself, at its foundation.

Arthur swept forward, yanking off his cap and tossing it aside. He pulled the lights, which flooded the darkened room in a soft white, and held his arms out.

"Imagine it, Lo," he said. "A little welcome 'ome party for Jamie. 'e comes back from the 'ospital, right, and comes 'round 'ere. I'll make up some excuse for 'im, get Finn to bring 'im 'round. I'll get all 'is friends 'ere, get some of the locals what were askin' for 'im. Free drinks, some food – little olives on plates like what they 'ad in London. I were thinkin' we could ask the nurses if 'e could come 'ome tomorrow. You said end of the week."

I looked around, momentarily pausing on those whiskey bottles behind the bar. "D'you think he would be able for all that, Arthur? On his first day home?"

"Well, I reckon we could play it by ear," he said, his smile faltering. "But I want 'im to know 'e were missed, 'round 'ere. Finn asks 'bout 'im all the time. Wants to see 'im. I thought –…"

His eyebrows scrunched together and his stare fell to his shoes, like he had become confused. I felt a heavy regret in my chest and crossed the room to him, taking his hands in mine. Arthur wanted to do what he had promised – _try_.

"What about some bunting? You know, 'round the bar," I suggested. "Make it look even brighter. You did a nice job with renovating this place. Looks much nicer. Like those posh places you talked about in London."

His eyes brightened. "Polly were gonna sort the stylin' o' the place for this party, says it needs a woman's touch. 'er contribution, mind."

"I'll thank her for it," I said. "Thank _you_ , Arthur."

"I were the one what put 'im there. Only makin' it right. I'm gonna 'ead down to London after I talk to Jamie. Last time, Lo. Then I'll back up in time for the party, yeah?"

I rested my forehead against his and felt the trouble there, from France and Shelby blood. I smiled at him and said, "Do you remember that time you brought me for a date along the canal and brought your Tommy with us?"

He chuckled. "Fuck, Lo, I'd forgotten 'bout that. Tom never made such a fuss in 'is fuckin' life. Told Pol 'e were older enough to be on 'is own and she still made me take 'im. What made you think 'bout that, then?"

"Just being sentimental, I suppose. Tommy came to see me this morning –…"

"What did 'e fuckin' say?"

"Nothing, Arthur."

"Stickin' 'is fuckin' nose in where it don't belong," he grumbled. "I'll 'ave a word with 'im, Lo."

I nodded, because it was best not to do anymore with Arthur in a mood like that.

"Right, well, where do you plan to put the cake and all that? Can't only be a bunch of olives at this party for my little brother, Arthur, there'll be a riot."

He seemed to forget about Tommy almost instantly and started to move the stools around to show me where we could dance, where Jamie could have his first drink – _nothin' strong, Lo, promise_ – and I found myself swept away with him all over again.

**x**

In the hospital once more, I stepped into the room first and left Arthur to wait in the hall, holding that cap in his hands that he had wanted to gift to my little brother. He had crinkled its delicate paper, constantly turning it around in his hands while we had walked here. I had held onto his arm again and it almost felt like I had started to pull him once we reached the entrance of this building, his feet turned to marble like that of the counters in his bar and his arms stiff and tight.

Jamie was sipping at a bowl of soup, propped against his pillows. He seemed more alert, like his headache had cleared out, though the room was yellow and sour from the curtains being drawn shut.

"Jay? How are you feeling?"

"Better. Sorry about earlier, Lola," he said. "I wasn't feeling like myself."

I smiled at him. "It's all right. It's just – well, Arthur would like to talk to you."

His spoon hovered, half-full of the greenish soup in his bowl. "Is he here?"

"Outside," I said. "But he wanted your permission to come in, first. He would like to apologise in person. But if you're not feeling up to it, I'll tell him to come another time. He won't mind."

Jamie lowered his spoon without having swallowed another mouthful. "No," he said. "No, it's fine. I'd like to see him. Can you take this out, Lo?"

I nodded and took the bowl from him. I paused and bent to kiss his hair, breathing in the scent of him, once more thanking God that he was still there with me in his bed.

"I'm going to ask the nurses if they might let you home soon," I said. "Maybe tomorrow."

"Okay."

I hesitated. "Jamie, do you want me to stay with you while Arthur is here in the room? I don't mind, sweetheart."

"No, I want to talk to him. Honest, Lo. Just – can you come back after you finish talking to the nurses?"

I kissed his hair again. "Of course I will. But just remember that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

"I'm not a baby, Lola," he mumbled. "I can talk to him."

I thought that it was much more different for him than it had been in theory to forgive Arthur. I still felt proud of Jamie, though, for how he straightened his back and gave me one curt nod. I rarely liked to compare my brothers, but Jamie resembled Bill in some small ways, like the pout of his lips when he had resigned himself to something out of stubbornness.

"All right. I'll come back in a few minutes," I said. "And if you want Arthur out of this room, you only need tell him. He'll leave."

"How do you know?"

"I know him," I said gently. "And I know that he really wants to show you how sorry is, like we talked about."

"I'm not frightened of him," he said, more persistently. "It's just – I haven't seen him properly since the fight. I don't know what to say to him."

"Then let Arthur start."

Jamie nodded again. I walked back toward the door and had already gripped its handle when he called out, "Lola?"

"Yes?"

"I'd like to go home tomorrow too. I miss – I miss being home with you."

It warmed me so much that I felt a stinging behind my eyes. I smiled at him and said, "Tomorrow it is."

**x**

The light in the hall was faint and watery and washed him out. He flinched from the whine of the door, his eyes flashing to find mine. He sought any sign in my eyes that Jamie had wanted him out of the hospital and he moved toward me, unaware of how his own shoes brought him closer, the cap still in his hands.

"He wants to see you, Arthur," I told him.

Arthur drew in a sharp breath. "Good. Right."

"I'm proud of you, Arthur," I said.

He stood in that hall as if turned to stone, but his eyes were wet and sure. He looked for words, I could sense it in him, but nothing followed. He simply leaned forward and pecked my cheek, hovering there with his lips so close to my skin, before he went into the room and closed the door behind him.

**x**

The nurses had agreed; Jamie would be released tomorrow afternoon. I had been so thrilled that it almost slipped my mind, but I asked about the headaches. One nurse had glanced at the other and said, "For all the damage that was done to him, if all he suffers are some headaches, he would still be a lucky boy, Ms Callaghan."

**x**

There was a moment in which I stood outside his room and heard their low murmurs reverberating through the wood and it softened that tension in me. I was reluctant to ruin it, but I remembered what Jamie had asked and I pushed open the door to glance in at them. Arthur sat in my usual spot, the chair dragged closer to the bed. There, on the bedside table, was the cap that he had wanted to gift Jamie. I saw then that my brother was bent double from laughter and it looked for all the world like two friends had met in a normal place like a pub.

Arthur was smiling, too. He still held that uncertainty in himself, but he leaned forward toward my brother and fixed the blanket that almost slid off the bed. I was not sure what Arthur had said, what he had done exactly. I felt it was almost too sacred to the pair of them, that conversation, to even repeat what had been said. But he had loosened that budding fear in Jamie. He was only a boy, after all, and Arthur had many years on him.

Jamie met my eyes and nodded, like a silent reassurance that he could handle this on his own. I closed the door behind me and felt such relief that I seemed to float down that hall to sit in the gardens like I had with Tommy that morning.

**x**

Though there had been no mention from Arthur, there had been a Peaky boy stood in the hall the next afternoon to carry the bags that I had packed for Jamie, and who told us that a car had been sent for us rather than a cab. Jamie could walk just fine by himself. Somehow, he seemed even taller than he already had been before the fight.

I felt dwarfed by him and he was happy to remind me that I had always been the short one in the family, the same height as our mother, while Bill had been even taller than our father. But where Bill had been broad and wide, Jamie was lanky and gangly. He had not yet grown into himself, even if he thought that he had.

**x**

Mona had given the house another clean. She stood in the doorway when the car pulled in, arms crossed as she leaned against the frame. She hugged him close and kissed his cheek, which turned his skin pink and rosy. Her eyes ghosted over the Peaky boy who brought our bags to the door and tipped his cap at us before he left. She chose not to say a word about it.

Instead, she said, "I bought cake for you, Jay. Come into the kitchen, I'll cut you a slice."

"And what about poor Lola, eh?" I called out to her.

"Think the birds left something in their bowls for you," she answered.

I blew a strand of hair from my face and settled for hauling his bags to his room.

**x**

Not an hour later, there was a knocking at the door and I rushed to answer it before Mona could, for I knew that if she found another Peaky boy there, she would send him away. Stood on the footpath, Finn Shelby had his hands stuffed in his pockets and I felt a churning in my stomach, though I was not sure what had brought it on. It was nothing like it had been, when he had first come to tell me that my brother had been hurt. He even smiled in that awkward way that young lads did, shifting around.

"Hello, Ms Callaghan. I was wondering if Jamie was about."

"Finn?"

Finn looked behind me at Jamie who emerged from the kitchen, and his face broke into a much brighter smile, even if he quickly covered it once he spotted Mona. I was not sure how much he knew about Mona or if he knew how much she disliked his older brothers, but he tried to be polite and tilted his hat at her like the other Peaky boy had done.

"What do you want?" she asked, perhaps a little bit too acidly.

Finn swallowed. "I was just wondering if Jamie might want to come 'round and see the lads – we were thinking we could just hang around a bit, y'know –…"

"On the same day he gets out of the hospital? Very thoughtful."

"Mona," Jamie muttered, his cheeks aflame. "I'll grab my stuff and be right out, Finn."

"Right then," the other boy said. He seemed more than grateful to step aside and wait beside the door where Mona could not set him alight with just her glaring.

"I want to go out, Mona," Jamie said, his eyes switching to me. "Please, Lo? Only a few hours. I won't be out long, I'll stay 'round our place."

I was already well aware of where Finn would take him, but Mona only scoffed. "What if he has one of them headaches you were talking about, Lola?"

"I'll come right home," my brother said hastily. "I promise, Lo."

"Bring your scarf, it'll get nippy out tonight."

I tried not to look at Mona, whose dark form turned back into the kitchen.

**x**

I went to find her later and saw that she had slipped out the backyard. She had kicked aside the tools that Arthur had left there and left the new gate unlocked.

**x**

The street was cold and silent as I walked toward _The Garrison_ by myself. I heard my boots crack against the stone just like that first night when I had walked to the hospital to find my brother. I hoped that Finn had brought him right there, away from the biting cold of the night. I felt a bit silly for having brushed through my hair and darkened my lips with a nice rouge colour that Mona had forgotten from some night spent at ours, but I thought it was a special night for Jamie.

I turned onto the street that led to The Garrison and saw its blinding orange warmth seeping out from its stained windows, crowded at the front by drunken neighbours from Watery Lane. I was taken into that crowd, my shoulders clapped and my cheeks kissed a hundred times over, and I felt that those cheerful greetings were not only from being the older sister of the boy whose party was held here, but more for having walked with Arthur like I had that same day. It had been a sign all right.

I spotted Jamie inside, close to the bar with Finn and Isaiah, his lips held in a grin as he talked to his friends. I thought that I had made the right choice, letting Arthur hold a party for him. Polly made a fine job of decorating the place in bunting and food lined the bar. I tried to slip through the spinning twirls of those dancing, drunkenly falling over one another.

Before I could reach my brother, I was grabbed at the arms and turned to dance with Ronnie from our street, who was so drunk that his sour breath seemed to wash over me and swallow me whole.

"Lola, darlin', d'you want a whiskey, eh?"

He held out the glass in his hand, burnt umber and tempting. I took it from him, gulped it down, and let him take me for a little dance. It was fun, having been spun this way and that. I soon fell into a seat with a few girls I had known from our street and felt a sudden kinship with them, even if we had never really been friends at all. I told them about Jamie in his bed, the horror of it. I took another shot and another before a hand shot in front of me with one more glass of whiskey from Ronnie. I reached for it, but found it snatched away in an instant.

Polly Gray had taken it, swallowing it and placing the empty glass back in his palm.

"No more for her," she warned sharply.

Ronnie turned pale and nodded, disappearing into the folds of people around us. She held my arm in her grip and pulled me from my stool.

"Pol? Where's Arthur? Shouldn't he have come back from London by now?

She never answered. I saw Jamie again and he waved at me, making an effort to follow me, but he was cut off in the swell of the crowd. I stumbled after Polly who led me through that endless sea of bodies, sweaty and heady from the hard odour of alcohol. I felt the sudden wave of fresh, untainted air once Polly pushed open the door to the back-room, a private little spot for other events.

Thrown from the change, I stumbled to a halt beside her and wiped my brow with my sleeve, for this room was much colder, dried out and dull from its shutters having been left closed. The party was muffled by the doors swinging shut behind us and I felt I had stepped into another world where there was no laughter, for all the Shelbys sat at one table in the middle of the room. I felt a coldness trickle through me, starting from my throat and leaking downward until it had reached all parts of me, for this looked much more like a funeral party than anything I had ever seen.

John sat beside Charlie, hands rested on the table. By the window, Esme looked out at the dingy alley behind the pub. In the chair that faced the door we had just come through, Tommy sat and smoked a cigarette.

"Have a seat, Lola."

I wondered if it was the drinking, for a blurry film that fallen over my eyes, but I could walk well and took the seat across from him like he had asked. I awaited a scolding like what usually came from Mona about whiskey and stupidity. But Tommy only inhaled another lick of white, foaming smoke that then spilled from his nostrils and swirled around him.

I looked at John and his eyes immediately darted away to inspect the scuffed floorboards beneath him. It was Esme who looked at me and never looked away, her black eyes wise and knowing, until I forced myself to look back at Tommy. I felt she had told me in her own way, told me what had always been coming.

"Is it Arthur?" I asked weakly. "Is he all right?"

"Arthur was arrested in London tonight," Tommy said, his tone controlled and calm. "But we'll be –…"

"Arrested for what?"

Tommy never answered.

"She'll be a widow before she even marries him," Esme snorted bitterly, still peering through the window.

John shot her a scathing look and Tommy merely exhaled, his eyes lifting to look at the ceiling like he sought God in its golden trimmings. He seemed not to find him, for he looked back down at the ash in his tray. Behind me, Polly scoffed and rested her hand on my shoulder. She almost spoke, but Esme interrupted her again and I found myself hating her for it with every word that followed.

"He was arrested for murder," she said. "And hanged he will be."


	6. six

_six_

* * *

The light in the bathroom turned my skin a funny shade of blue and brought out those stark lines underneath my eyes that hollowed me out. I scrubbed away the red lipstick that I had dabbed against my lips and felt like a little girl again, having slunk into the house following a night out with friends, hoping that Bill might not catch sight of my cheeks painted in a light blush and my eyes darkened with kohl to imitate the older girls. It made me laugh, though it was quiet, because Jamie was in the bedroom right against the bathroom and the walls were flimsy. I heard a soft tapping at the door before the worn hinges creaked and I cursed myself, thinking that I had disturbed him.

"Lola?"

I sat on the edge of the bathtub and pulled off my shoes. "Come in, Jamie."

The scarring that ran along his hairline had turned even more raw and bumpy beneath the harsh, acid-yellow light that shrieked from the bulb overhead once he flicked at the switch, all that moonlight shrinking back between the gaps in the curtains and pooling on the streets below.

"Were you sleeping?"

"No," he said. "I was thinking about Arthur."

I felt that familiar pricking behind my eyes. "He'll be all right," I said softly. "He can handle himself."

"Prison is different." He leaned against the bathroom door awkwardly. "Bill said so. Said no man had friends in prison."

"Bill had no friends outside of prison, either," I replied. I caught that anxious tremor around his mouth and held out my arm. "Sit with me, Jay."

I pushed closer against the wall for him to awkwardly sit his lanky frame alongside him, perched on the rim of the bathtub together. I stroked his hair and let him rest against me, his head tucked against my chest. There was no sound but his breathing and my eyes turned upward to soften the stinging that afflicted me. I kissed his hair and inhaled his scent like I had done many times before. I used to watch him in his crib when he was a little new-born stained in pinks and reds and his mouth stretched to wail.

"When you were a baby," I told him, "I used to hold my palm flat on your chest just to know that you were still breathing. Could never sleep myself without knowing it."

He was quiet and his skin was warm.

"In the hospital, I did it, too," I continued. "I find myself wanting to do it now that you're home. I keep thinking if I look away too long – it'll happen again."

"The first time that I ever went boxing, it was Bill who brought me. D'you remember?"

I snorted. "Only thing Bill liked, knocking other lads about."

Jamie laughed and straightened out. "He showed me how to tie the gloves and dodge and all that. I thought he looked –…" – he ducked his head, a rueful smile on his lips before he looked at me again – "…proud. I dunno. Could have been the first punch that knocked me clean off my feet that made me think that."

"He was proud," I said. "He just could never say it. Never allowed himself to say it."

"I want to do it again. I want to box, Lola. I'm not afraid of it."

"But I am," I said softly.

"Arthur wants to work with me, this time," he said, a hint of pleading spilling into his tone. "It'll be different."

"What makes you think that? What makes you think it could be worth that kind of risk?"

"Because I let Arthur start," he said. "In the hospital, when he came to talk to me, like you said. I thought he would start with the usual kind of stuff that you would expect – sorry, never meant it. But he started telling me about heaviness, instead. He said I would understand it better; boxers understand that, that heaviness at the end of a match."

His jawline had sharpened and he had lost his baby-fat. He had stubble, now.

"He said that it used to be his heaviness was only in his body, after being battered 'round the ring so much that he just dropped – and if he won, it he dropped later after taking some whiskey to celebrate and he would heal from the bruising and be right again. He doesn't remember when he stopped being able to do that. He said he feels that heaviness all the time now, in his head and in his body, like he's stuck in that ring."

I felt a nervous twitch in my hands and clasped them in my lap to steady them. "He can't use any excuses, Jamie. If he does something – if he hurts somebody – he can't talk about heaviness."

"What more can he do, Lola? He was explaining himself. Did you want me to hate him? Would you rather I tell him never to speak to us both again?"

I loosened that tightness in my jaw. "No," I admitted. "No, I would rather you wanted him around. I would rather you found it in your heart to forgive him."

"I saw how he held your hand. I saw how he looked at you," he said. "I'm not blind."

Redness crept along my nape and settled on my cheeks. "I wanted to ask John if I could come to London with him tomorrow. Tommy thinks he'll be released. But I feel –…"

"Guilty?"

"Yeah. Guilty."

He scoffed. "Didn't start with Arthur, that."

"What d'you mean?"

He glanced at me and shrugged his shoulders. "Just meant – well, you were like that every time Dad left and Bill got locked up and Mam disappeared in one of her moods. Drowned yourself in guilt for me. Should stop all that, Lola. It was hard for us. But I felt better with you there. It hurt, but it hurt me less when they left because you were still there. Got each other. Always did. Still do."

He bumped my arm with his shoulder and I felt soppy for how the tears soaked my cheeks. It was a goofy, fond smile that pulled at my lips and forced my arms to wrap around him again and hold him close.

"Go to London," he said, his words seeping through the damp flesh of my throat as I rocked him. "He'll be happy if he finds you there when he gets out. Mona'll be even happier to sleep in your bed while you're gone. She'll stay with me, you'll have nothing to worry about."

"I'll worry all the same. And it never matters to Mona if I'm in it or not, she takes all the blankets for herself."

He grinned. "I meant what I said, Lo. Arthur apologised for what he did. What you're looking for now – it's not for him to give. It's on you."

I sighed and then lightly bumped my fist against his cheek. "When did you become a philosopher? Never thought that you would care for all that nonsense."

"Living in a place like Watery Lane makes you think about things like that," he replied, smacking my hand away. "Living in this house makes you think even more."

"Hm, should let Arthur come 'round often in that case. Might make him think before he acts and gets himself locked up."

"You should be packing for London."

"You should be asleep. I'll have to talk to Mona. She'll be furious, you know. She never did like Arthur."

"She'll come 'round," he said. "I'll talk to her."

I kissed his cheek and gently pushed his shoulder to make him stand. "Go to sleep, Jamie. Enough of all that thinking for one night. There'll be more than enough for tomorrow."

**x**

At dawn, I had stood in front of the Shelby house and grasped its knocker in my hand, tapping at its black paint until the curtains twitched behind the windows alongside me and the door snapped open to show John; bleary-eyed, squinting against the cold light that dribbled between the clouds. I told him that I had packed a small bag and that I wanted to join him in London. It was short notice, he probably preferred to travel by himself, but I had found a determination in myself that morning while feeding the birds. I wanted to join him in London.

John stared at me for a moment longer after my speech had finished, wobbling on his doorstep in his sleepy confusion. Then, his voice worn in hoarseness, he said, "I'll bring the car 'round in an hour, shall I?"

I nodded. "That would be nice, thank you."

"Nice," he repeated. "Nice would be gettin' to sleep for more than half-an-hour in in this fuckin' house."

Before he had fully closed the door, I heard the sudden chorus of children wailing from upstairs and glimpsed his withered expression just as the door slammed shut.

**x**

Stepping through the kitchen, I glanced up to find Mona in the backyard. I was even more stunned that she filled their bowls, something that I had never seen her do before. I stepped outside with her. I knew she heard my boots squish the puddles clogged between the cobbles. I stood beside her, watching her slim hands sprinkle some food onto the floor of the loft for those smaller birds tucked behind the others. I thought she might never speak to me. But then she held out the bowl toward me, never turning her attention away from the birds. I took the bowl and smiled to myself.

Together, we fed the birds quietly. I wondered if Jamie had even had the chance to talk with her like he had planned, because he was still in bed. Perhaps she had come around on her own. Mona had accepted Arthur once before. I felt if she was given a little time, she would accept him again.

"You tell him," she said, "once he gets out of that prison, that if he ever hurts you, I'll grind him up and feed him to these birds myself."

Finally she looked at me, grinning. She took some of the food from the bowl and flicked it at me, snorting when I immediately grabbed a chunk to throw right back at her. I had never had a sister until I had Mona.

**x**

The roads had been silent and grey that morning that John brought me to London. There had been some arrangements made in a hotel, John said, where there had been a room booked for me – just me, because he had another place, he added, his cheeks pink in colour and his eyes flitting outward to take in the brambles that brushed against the car. I had braided my hair that morning and felt light, frizzy strands whip against my temples from the crisp wind; that same wind that dried the tears which swelled in the corners of my eyes before I could even let them fall, my head tilted back against the seat, my hands clasped on my lap, for I had started to worry more and more about him inside those awful cells.

John noticed and started to talk about the weather and the kids and anything but Arthur.

**x**

London had been painted in light airy colours whenever I conjured those old memories of sunny days spent wandering its old streets with Arthur, all those years ago. It was raining like it had been in Birmingham, the water dripping from gutters that ran along the tall houses with neat gardens until the city grew around us with its buildings like overgrown weeds blotting out all the light from the clouds. I found the droplets against the glass of the car quite calming, though the car had become stuffy, musty, damp – or perhaps that was simply from the understanding that I had misremembered, because really, the truth that was London looked just like it had before.

I had thrown in all that colour because I had been with Arthur and he had brightened things, then. It had been easier, as kids, to blot out the things that bothered me. I looked out at its passing buildings and flats slopping together overhead bustling shops and thought it all seemed much too clear, now.

John pulled into a laneway and swept an umbrella overhead while we walked, holding my worn suitcase in the other hand, seeming quite at ease with the crowds that flowed against us. He pointed at some sweeping marbled pillars ahead and I realised, from quick glimpses taken between the bobbing of the umbrella in his grip, that that was the hotel booked for me while we waited for Arthur.

Beneath the golden lining that surrounded its looming entrance, there stood a doorman, adorned in gloved hands and a top-hat that seemed other-worldly to me, and the sight of him forced me to stand still underneath the high arches whose edges dripped in a sheet of misty rain. John had taken only two steps ahead before he noticed and turned, eyebrows raised. He cast a strained smile that the doorman, but he pulled me aside and spoke lowly.

"Lola? Don't you like it?"

I tore my eyes from the high ceilings and looked at him. "Never stayed in a place like this before, is all."

John snorted. "Well, what do you think would happen if I told Arthur I had brought you to London and left you to sleep in an alleyway, eh? String me up from Big Ben, he would, and then some."

I was quiet, taking in the glittering chandelier that smouldered through the glass doors, sweeping gentle golden hues around the outline of the doorman, whose slim frame stood motionless in his place, with his dark eyes flicking around the strangers that passed on the street behind us being the sole sign that he was not a statue carved into the beautiful stone of the hotel.

"I told him not to pay me off," I said. "In the hospital –…"

"Tommy never told Arthur that you would be comin' to London," John cut in, "and he never told him that you knew he had been arrested. Didn't give us much time, did you, demandin' to come with me like you did."

"What made him tell me?"

John shrugged. "Never said – rarely explains himself, our Tom. But I reckon he remembers how much happier Arthur was with you."

"I know what Tommy thinks about happiness."

"Then you know more than me," he replied. "You were family, Lola. Arthur always went to you 'fore he even went to Polly. Tom remembers that, too. He might be a fuckin' tool half the time, but Tommy would want you someplace nicer than whatever pit Arthur tried to bring you to last time you two came to London."

I laughed and it felt so warm that it seemed to thaw the coldness around my feet from damp socks. "He saved up his pocket-money for weeks, John," I said fondly. "Cleaning up the yard for Charlie and working with the horses, you know. He saved for weeks and bought us tickets for the train and paid for everything all around London. Got me a bracelet. I reckon it must still be in my room somewhere, that bracelet; silver, it was, with a little red stone."

"Did you stay overnight?"

"No," I snorted. "Lost track of time and had to run for the last train back to Birmingham. Arthur had left the tickets down someplace and we had to dodge the fella that came 'round checking for them. Ran between all the carriages just to avoid him. God, I forgot about that little bracelet. Funny, eh?"

John smiled and picked up my suitcase again, having placed it beside his shoes. "Take the room, Lo. Tom left me some errands to run but Arthur should be out soon enough, if all goes to plan."

"Plan?"

His shoulders lifted and fell. "Couldn't tell you any details about it, mind. But Tom is good with these plans, never done us wrong before."

I shot him a doubtful look and he swallowed.

"Well, mostly. Now, come on – my shoes are soaked through and I don't fancy standin' 'round here with that wally of a doorman watchin' us for much longer."

**x**

There was a marbled fireplace in the hotel suite with a painting stabled overhead; green strokes swept together to form lush meadows with rolling hills, one tipping into the other, small rabbits dotted around between the shrubbery. There was a manor-house tucked between those slopes that tipped onto one another sluggishly, separated in thin lines of moody greens and blacks blended together. The house was white, its windows haloed in orange from the warmth and light within. It seemed out of place.

"Room, you said," I called out to John. I turned to him and found him readjusting his cufflinks, his lips held in a smirk. "Not an entire suite for one person."

"Never let them say I am not the most generous of the Shelby brothers, Lola," he replied. "Felt it was owed to you, really, puttin' up with our Arthur."

John was quiet. He took out a cigarette and offered me one, though I dismissed it. London had a thickness in its air that I thought could only worsen from the dense smoke that blew from his lips soon after. I knew if I said that to John, he would laugh, because Birmingham was blanketed by grey smoke from the chimneys in the factories.

"I wanted to apologise, Lo," John said. His eyes flicked to meet mine. "For what Esme said to ya 'bout Arthur. She were wrong. He ain't murdered no-one. Not lately, anyway."

"What made her say it?"

He poked his tongue against his cheek and then sighed, shaking his head. "Esme – she don't like this world," he said. "This life, I mean – with the Blinders. She thinks it _damages_ me, inside. Reckons she can sense it. When she says things like that, she usually does it 'round Tommy. Suppose she wants to – …" – he paused to clear his throat and shift uncomfortably in his seat – "…express herself."

I smiled at his tone, crossing my arms and looking back at that painting. There was something lonely about it that resonated in me; something that had been there a while, when I really looked at it.

"She should express herself," I said, my eyes glazed from all that green. "Or it'll eat away at her until she can't recognise herself anymore."

**x**

Afterward, alone in that hotel suite with its many rooms and broad windows that I had opened to let in all the sound of London below, I sat in an armchair and drifted off; not to sleep, but someplace much further. I wished desperately that I had some whiskey, which always happened whenever I was alone in funny places like this one. It was a dryness in my throat that made me want it. But I had made promises to my little brother. I let my palms itch and my throat tighten. But I would not drink.

It had been worse, after Bill had died. Not many places had wanted to serve me in our local shops, though I had never been like those loud drunks who shouted and toppled things in their house in some blind stupor. I had been quiet, slinking between the rooms of our house and slurred out my sadness to its cobwebs and sometimes to the birds. Jamie had stayed with some friends for a while. It was Mona who had arranged it. She had no house of her own to take him in. She said drinking was a weakness.

Perhaps that was what I understood most about Arthur; his weaknesses, the dryness in his throat and the itch in his palm that seemed far more intense than mine.

I heard the honks and the chatter and the laughter from the street below like I had floated into the clouds and I was slowly fluttering back down like those loose, fluffy feathers that the pigeons shed in the backyard, slicing backward and forward in the air until I curled against the ground, moved only by the shivering ripples of wind that dashed me from spot to blackened spot. I felt I had been like that all my life. There could be no more of it.

**x**

John called around seven that night. Arthur would be released in the morning, he said, somebody would be sent to the hotel suite to fetch me. _An Irishman,_ he added _. Named Dogs._

I bathed in the porcelain bathtub that night with foaming bubbles, my head tilted back against the hard rim, my eyes tracing the winding vines carved into the off-white moulding on the ceiling. After, I slept in that bed with the windows left open, for I had grown accustomed to the noises of Birmingham and felt adrift without them. I missed Jamie terribly. I missed Arthur, too. I even missed the cooing of the birds.

**x**

I missed _Bill_.

**x**

In the morning, I wore the nicest dress that I had brought in my suitcase and braided my hair and waited for the Irishman named Dogs. He arrived at seven, battering the door with his fist and whistling a faint tune that cut off abruptly once I opened the door. He reminded me of those men that filled the bars in Ireland that my father had hung around – odd characters, drifting from one town to another and chopping off all roots that formed beneath their boots; born nowhere but alive in all places.

"Dogs?"

He shrugged. "Johnny," he corrected. "But I been called worse in my time. Lola Callaghan? Tell me if your Da isn't Rudy Callaghan from Clonlara?"

"You knew him, then?"

"Knew him? Drank him under the table many a night in Dublin, I did. Fine man, your Da, and a great loss to us," he said kindly, kissing my knuckles. "He had himself a beautiful daughter and all."

"Must introduce me to her sometime," I replied.

"He was a fine man," he said again, marching alongside me through the hall.

"Fine as a bullet in the head," I said drily. "Come on then, Johnny Dogs. Places to be."

**x**

Rain fell from the guttering in dense lines and lashed against the windscreen of the van. The misty droplets smeared the little mirrors on either side and I squinted through the beading pearls to spot him in that prison, tucked behind its red-brick walls, sitting in his cell. I wondered if the rain hit so loudly against his windows or if the bars blocked them. Bill had spent quite a lot of time in prison, but he had never talked about rain against his windows. He had never talked much at all – but he tried, sometimes.

**x**

The rain dribbled into faint patches of wispy spray and then settled entirely. Johnny pulled a flask from his coat and tipped it against his lips, gulping madly. He held it out, its silver glint taunting me, but I thought of Jamie in his hospital bed and waved it off. Johnny glanced down at his flask, back up at me, and then nodded knowingly, brushing a fingertip against his nose like I had let him in on some secret. I stared blankly at him until it hit me that he probably thought that I was pregnant. I shot him a withered glare and turned back to watch the slick black doors of the prison in that small mirror.

It had ticked past nine before there was a creaking behind the doors with clinking chains and the distant shouts of guards. I quickly climbed out of the car but Johnny stayed where he was, that silver flask flashing behind me as the door shut. I saw him between the gaps in those awful doors, saw him smooth down his hair like he always did, readied it for his flat-cap hastily plopped onto his head as he stepped through onto the street. He had kept his eyes down, focused on his own leather shoes.

I waited for him; heart alight and limbs turned fuzzy until his stare lifted and latched onto mine and all that tension sprung loose into my arms thrown around him, holding him close, feeling burrow into the crook of my neck to find those places that had once been familiar to him. I felt him laugh more than I heard it, felt his lips press against that hollow spot in my throat. It was intimate and bold, nothing like the touches that had happened between us in the past few weeks.

He seemed to remember it, too. He straightened himself out, fixed his collar and tried to shroud his pink cheeks from me.

"Last time you saw me, you said you was proud o' me," he said, drawing in a sharp breath that rattled through his bony frame. "D'you regret it?"

I touched his cap; its razors sparked in a flash of silver against the light. I cupped his nape, pulling his forehead against mine.

"Said we would share it, didn't we?"

He exhaled and I felt him sag against me. "I never did nothin'," he said. "I swear, Lo. I never 'urt no-one – not this time."

"I know," I told him.

"I'm doin' better." He made sure to look at me properly. "I'm _bein'_ better. For you and Jamie."

The prison doors clapped shut behind him, the rusted hinges whining.

"I know," I said again. "I know."

**x**

There had been Epsom to attend, in a fresh suit with cap tucked low against his brow. I had looked at him there with his brothers, for Tommy had arrived with his cavalry, but I would not be at the races with him and started to wonder if he would be in more trouble within the hour. It worried me so much that I dared kiss him on his cheek as they prepared the van to take them there. I had suffered the boyish snickering of the others who clapped him on the shoulder, acting like little schoolboys. Jamie had more sense than him and he was only seventeen.

Tommy had merely pulled a cigarette from his pocket, his cold eyes settling on his brother, before he drawled, "So, all is right in the world then, is it?"

"Aye, Tom," Arthur said, his chest puffed and his grin wide and sure. "It sure fuckin' is."

While Tommy talked, Arthur took my hand and held it tight, like he used to do.

**x**

But the races had to end, eventually.

**x**

The clouds had turned black and stormy. I had pulled an armchair across flush carpet and brought it close to that windowsill with its sheer curtains tied back with loose golden string, propping my feet on that wooden ledge and sinking low against the chair to smoke a cigarette and watch London floating beneath me. I watched the black-tiled roofs on the other buildings turn wet and runny from the rain. If I wanted to tip ash into my tray, I had to lean forward and I liked to look down at the umbrellas which hid the footpath from sight, bopping back and forth, blending together beneath the downpour.

He knocked and stepped into the suite. I craned my neck to look back at him from over the chair, turning around again when I saw him shrug off his coat and cap. I took another drag from my dwindling cigarette and saw an orange light bloom in the flat of one of the buildings across from ours. I watched a silhouette dance against that colour, sweeping across the room from one end to the other.

"Lola?"

"Pull up a seat. Almost like watching a pantomime," I told him.

I heard the dull groan of another armchair pulled against mine. It was almost like how it had been at the hospital, our chairs pressed together. He looked handsome, shaking out his hair and letting it fall whatever way that it was meant to. He had his sleeves rolled back, the top buttons undone. His hand found mine, thumb sweeping over my knuckles; old habits.

"I missed ya, Lola."

"I imagine it was cold in there," I said. "Those cells, I mean."

"Not just in the prison," he said. "I always missed ya."

I felt my stare drift back toward that painting over the fireplace once more, its colours fading into one thick blend of greenish-black. Arthur presumably figured out what had distracted me.

"D'you ever want an 'ouse like that, out the country – away from all the shit in Birming'am?"

"No," I answered simply. "Because we would like it for all of a month and then despise it for the rest of our lives."

He laughed. "And what makes you think that then?"

"You never do well with big spaces like that, Arthur," I said gently. "Isolation makes you anxious, makes you look for something to do. Idle hands and all that. It wouldn't help you."

"You'll 'elp me," he said. "We can fix it, now. Plan ahead."

He had that pleading sheen to his eyes, his face open and hopeful. His hand clutched mine even more tightly without him seeming to realise it at all. I untangled my hand from his, touching his cheek.

"Arthur, I know you want me to heal you. I know that you think us being together will settle all that noise in your head," I said gently. "I'll share with you, just like I promised. I'll always listen, I'll be what you need when you need it. But it goes both ways. I'm not here to cure you."

He drew back and I felt the warmth of his hand drain from mine.

"I know I weren't there for ya," he mumbled. "When Bill died and that –…"

"Bill had a lot of noise in his head, just like you. Started before France, for him. Never stopped until he _made_ it stop." I ground the cigarette into the tray and saw that the umbrellas still bopped down below. "I never want you to feel that your only option is the one that Bill took, Arthur."

"I don't think that," he said thickly. "I don't think you're some cure, Lo, some end to all me other problems –…"

"But I thought of you like that," I admitted. "It was Tommy that told me about daydreams. About temporary things for us. I think he had a point."

"Don't you go tellin' 'im that," he muttered. "Got a big enough ego as it is, our Tom."

I laughed at him. He stretched his legs out, mimicking me by placing his shoes on the windowsill and leaning back in his chair. I switched positions, draping my legs over his. I looked the black slates on the roofs again.

"This isn't us, Arthur," I said. I waved my hand around. "This room, this hotel – John made me think about how it was for us the first time that we came to London. He made me remember trying to dodge that ticket inspector with you –…"

"Lost the fuckin' tickets in a pub in Camden Town," he groaned, laughing along with me. "'ad you run fuckin' ragged tryin' to make the train on time. Imagine what Polly would 'ave done to me if I told 'er we missed the train and slept on the streets for a night. Dread to fuckin' think…"

I had missed him so immensely; it made me feel overwhelmed, like I had leaned out that window a little too much and felt that numbness in my legs from a fear of heights.

"I used to think I would like a manor like that one," I said. "Or some fancy apartment in London, you know. But I think I'm happy with our little place in Birmingham. I'm happy with feeding the birds in the mornings, happy with making sure Jamie has all he needs. Happy with _you_."

"Don't fancy any fuckin' manor me-self," he said. "I'd be the one doin' all the upkeep on them gardens while you lounge about."

I burst into laughter, giving his leg a light kick with my foot. "Sounds about right."

**x**

In the morning, after we had slept together in bed for the first time in years, he brought me pastries from a bakery nearby; he said there had been some flat overhead the bakery and he saw its windows were open. It meant something to him, but he couldn't remember why.

**x**

* * *

**x**

There was a distant thumping down the hall blending into the shouts of men. I wrapped bandages around his wrists and placed his gloves on his hands. I had bought them for him, spent the last of what Bill had left for us. Jamie had grown even taller in the last few months. His hair had grown out, coating the scarring that had faded somewhat into a lighter pink colour against his pale skin. He stood still and let me hug him, pulling him close. I pecked his cheek and smoothed down his hair.

Then I followed him down that long, lime-green hall. I heard the blooming cacophony of the men on the other end, the constant bump of gloves against punching-bags and the whine of the chains. He seemed to find himself in those sounds and started to bounce on the balls of his feet, cracking his neck and stretching his new gloves.

He climbed into the ring and held out his glove toward his opponent – Arthur returned it, grinning at him.

"Right," he said. "Start with some light swings, son – put your weight into it, Jay – that's it, lad – …"

Jamie swung like he was told, dodged the gentle punches that Arthur threw at him. I watched from the side-lines, arms crossed. Arthur was soft on my brother. It was the first training session that Jamie had had since he had been put in the hospital and he seemed to fall back into his old routine, his feet seeming more certain with every bounce and step. He managed to hit Arthur in the ribs and paused, like he thought it might set off that old temper. But Arthur took it well.

He said, "Swing even 'arder next time, Jay. You got it, lad. Try again, come on –…"

While Jamie took a short break to gulp down the water left aside for him, Arthur turned to look at me and smiled. I touched the bracelet on my wrist; it was simple and delicate, made from a beautiful silver and fixed with a red stone.

**x**

Finally, Arthur slipped off his gloves. Jamie wanted to spar more with Finn and Isaiah. I had felt this awful pull in my chest to tell him to quit, that practice with Arthur had been enough, but Arthur had leaned close to me and said, "You 'ave to let him start, Lola."

So, I let him start.

**x**

In the afternoon, we stood in the backyard and fed the birds. There was noise in the house, now. It came from the soft, throaty grumble of his voice whenever he told me about one bird in particular. It came from our laughter and the faint shrieks of the children rushing through the alleyway behind us and the birds' wings flapping against the mesh-wire, pecking at their bowls. He took them out to calm them.

He held them gently.


End file.
